
Class _l^liiM2 
Book_ __„: 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND HIS 
PROBLEMS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

AND HIS PROBLEMS 



BY 
THOMAS ARKLE CLARK 

DEAN OF MEN, UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS, URBANA, ILLINOIS 



Nrm f nrk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1920 

All rights reserved 



O^Y^ 



]^' 



h^'^ 






Copyright, 1920 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and elcctrotyped. Published April, 1920. 






PREFACE 

I can not remember a time since I have been grown 
when I did not know, intimately, boys of high school age 
and in high school, and when I did not like to sit down 
and talk to them. One group of boys, only a few years 
ago, I had almost daily contact with from the time they 
entered high school until they graduated from college. 
As a college executive, I meet, personally, every autumn, 
hundreds of boys fresh from the training of the high school, 
and revealing almost at once what they have gained and 
what they have missed. It is this intimate contact with 
so many thousands of high school boys that has induced 
me to write the papers contained in this little book. 

Morals and Manners was read before a meeting of the 
North Central Academic Association; Going to College was 
given as a Commencement address to the boys of the 
University School, Cleveland, Ohio; the other papers have 
not previously been printed. 

Thomas Akkle Clark 
Urbana, Illinois, 
August, 1919. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The High School Boy 1 

The Course 21 

Studies and Other Things 40 

Examinations and Grades 56 

The Leisure Hour 76 

Books and Reading 96 

Social Activities 114 

Morals and Manners 132 

Choosing a Profession 152 

Going to College 168 



HI 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND HIS 
PROBLEMS 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY AND 
HIS PROBLEMS 

THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

Bill and I were walking down town one September 
afternoon talking in a friendly way as we were accustomed 
to do. School was to open the next day, and Bill was to 
begin his high school course. He seemed more thought- 
ful than usual; something I could not make out was on 
his mind. 

" What is it, BHl? '^ I asked finally. '' What big scheme 
are you working out?" 

"Won't tomorrow be a wonderful day!" he exclaimed. 
It was to him the beginning of a new existence. 

The entrance of the boy into high school comes at the 
most critical period of his Hfe. He is fourteen years of 
age usually, if he is a normal boy, and fourteen marks the 
dividing Hne between childhood and youth — childhood 
which passes all too soon, youth which opens up a thou- 
sand possibihties, which stirs a thousand new emotions, 
new impulses and new desires, which puts before him a 
thousand opportunities and a thousand new temptations 
for which he is often unprepared. It is a time of restless- 
ness and change for the boy, perhaps which tends often to 

1 



2 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

make him give up school and to drive him upon the rocks. 
It is perhaps to be deplored that high school and adoles- 
cence should come at the same time. 

It is for this reason that many thoughtful teachers have 
tried to change the situation by making it possible for 
children to complete the work of the grades by the time 
they are twelve, so that they may be well entered upon 
the work of the high school before the time of physical 
transition comes. Whether or not such reorganization of 
school work is feasible and whether or not it will ever be 
generally made, depends upon a good many things which 
it is hardly desirable to discuss here. 

It is about the boy himself that I want most to speak 
and of the various problems which at the high school age 
he is called upon to solve. A lot of things are happening 
to him about the time he enters high school, very im- 
portant things, too, and yet he is seldom prepared for 
these. He does not understand the situation at all him- 
self, and those who know anything about it seldom help 
him out. His teachers are generally afraid to tell him 
what he ought to know about himself, or they are perhaps 
so taken up with presenting to him facts about history and 
economics and grammar and mathematics and the lives 
and accomplishments of other men, that they have no 
time to give to the boy himself. Even his Sunday school 
teacher who ought to get down to practical every day 
matters, generalizes on the facts and the phrases of the 
Bible and seldom if ever makes any personal or practical 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 3 

application of its teachings to the boy's daily life. His 
mother has never been a boy, so she has no idea what 
revolutions are going on in his mind and body unless he tells 
her as he infrequently does, of the changes in view point 
which passing childhood and dawning youth bring, and his 
father — his father has long ago forgotten that he ever was 
a boy, so that he gives the son no concern. 

The sensible, sympathetic father who takes his four- 
teen-year-old boy into his confidence and who talks to 
him frankly about the changes which are going through 
and within him is so rare as to be a negligible quantity 
in the discussion of the boy and his problems. Ninety- 
five per cent of the boys who enter college from high 
school will say, if asked, that their fathers have never 
so much as mentioned to them anything that had to 
do with sex or adolescence. What the boy learns at 
this time about his body and about the mysteries of 
life generally comes from boys as ignorant as himself, 
or more likely than not from some one who is not only 
ignorant but whose moral ideals are low and whose tenden- 
cies are vicious. It is the rowdy and the street loafer, and 
the nomadic hired man who has picked up his facts from the 
gutters, and the ignorant and the vulgar minded who solve 
our boys' sex problems for them — ^more's the pity! 

A good many things are happening to a boy who is just 
entering high school, as I have said. Educationally he is 
forming an entirely new relationship. High school is differ- 
ently run from the elementary school. He will have more 



4 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

liberty and less restraint than he has been accustomed to, 
his teachers will treat him more as a man than he has ever 
before been treated. The subjects which he will take up are 
in themselves more interesting, they require more thought 
and less memory, more independence and more origi- 
nality. He will need, if he is to get on, to apply his 
mind more seriously and for longer periods of time than 
has been necessary before. He will have, almost for the 
first time, opportunities for thought and reasoning. As 
he takes advantage of these opportunities and begins to 
think and plan and act for himself, he will gain the sort of 
strength that he will need later in life. The more responsi- 
bility he can take at this time the better for him. If he 
has a job or an obligation of some sort that requires regular 
daily attention it will be of tremendous advantage to him. 
It will strengthen his body and so reinforce his will. The 
more he is repressed, the longer some one else does his 
thinking for him and shoulders his responsibilities, the 
longer and the more assuredly he will remain a child. 

But the most important things that are happening to 
him are physical and emotional. His body changes rapidly. 
His shoulders broaden, his arms and legs shoot out so 
fast that it is almost impossible to keep him inside his 
clothes. He grows up overnight, like a mushroom. 
His voice deepens, and he begins to realize for the first 
time perhaps that he is a boy and that he will soon be 
a man. It is his awkward age when no one understands 
him and when he least of all understands himself. He 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 5 

is not so frank as he was. He keeps a great many things 
to himself, or if he tells them at all, he tells them to his 
boy friends only, because most of all he dislikes being 
laughed at or thought ignorant. A thousand things 
about his own being awaken his curiosity, and about 
these he is eager for information, but he seldom asks 
questions, because he would not for the world suggest 
the fact he does not know the things that he is the most 
eager to learn. He will even lie rather than admit igno- 
rance of the questions which concern him most vitally. He 
is alert; he keeps his ears and his eyes open; but too often 
what he learns is in no sense enlightening or illuminating, 
and injures rather than helps him out of his quandary. 
Few people talk frankly and openly about the subjects 
which interest his developing mind. He wants very much 
to be a man all at once, and it is this desire very largely, 
no doubt, which causes him so easily to fall into the 
temptation of forming the bad rather than the good 
habits of men. I have never been able to understand 
why to a boy bad habits are likely to seem so much 
more manly than good ones. 

In addition to the physical changes which are going 
on in his body there are within him emotional changes 
quite as great if not more so. He is subject at this time 
more than at any other time of his life to religious influ- 
ences. If there is a religious revival in the community, 
he is among the first to show interest in it, and to ''come 
forward.'' If he gets by this period of life without taking 



6 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

any definite stand in religious matters it will take a con- 
siderable amount of logic or persuasion later to stir 
him. This is his time of idealism, of the awakening in 
him of respect and reverence for God and that which 
is best in man. Those who teach him may not wisely 
forget this fact. 

He is becoming a hero worshiper, too, and it is the 
physical hero who receives his devotion. Football stars 
and clever baseball players and prize fighters attract his 
attention. If the question of legalizing prize fights were 
left to the vote of high school boys the affirmative vote 
would be overwhelming. If he reads the newspapers 
at all it is the sporting sheet for which he first asks; 
he soon learns who is high man in sporting circles, it 
is not long before he can call all the better known ones by 
their first names, and he follows their performances like 
a personal friend. Adventure, deeds of heroism, physical 
prowess of all sorts fill his mind and fire his imagination. 
It is unfortunate if his teacher at this time is a physical 
weakling or unsympathetic with physical fitness and ath- 
letic sports. Such a man will have little influence, moral or 
intellectual, with the fourteen-year-old. It is the man who 
can knock a home run, or break through the interference, 
or lick anybody who challenges him, who is a hero in the 
boy's eyes. 

I have always been in theory opposed to corporal 
punishment and a strong advocate of moral suasion. An 
experience I had soon after I got out of college almost 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 7 

converted me to the opposite theory. I was principal of 
a school with an enrollment of several hundred boys, a 
good many of them of high school age. They were rough, 
ill-trained, and notoriously hard to control and had driven 
out more than one timid teacher before my arrival. For 
two weeks I got on with them moderately well without 
laying a hand on any one. I was pleasant and firm; I 
took a good many of their pranks lightly, with the hope 
that if I did not notice their deviltries too much they would 
be discontinued. 

I was quite mistaken, however. The boys misinterpreted 
my point of view entirely. They thought me soft-hearted, 
afraid to wield the willow switch, a weakling, in fact. It 
was only after I had soundly thrashed a half dozen or so 
of the leaders that they had any respect for me. They 
all adored physical strength, and those whom I castigated 
most vigorously were throughout my regime the most 
docile and they love me today. 

If the boy develops a taste for reading at this point in 
his life, and it is well if he does, it is no sentimental stuff 
such as his sister dotes on, that pleases his taste. War and 
bloodshed and adventure hold him. Strategy and deep-laid 
plots and hairbreadth escapes are to his liking. Indians 
and burglars and highwaymen are his ideals. He courts 
danger and adores exhibitions of physical courage. He will 
probably break a bone or two in attempting to emulate 
the physical stunts which most please him. If he ever 
runs away from home it will be now, and most normal boys 



8 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY ' 

of fourteen have at least seriously contemplated such an 
action more than once, if they have not actually put it into 
effect. It is, of course, not pleasant to have a favorite 
son or pupil ''turn up missing" as an Irishman would 
say, but it is nothing to be especially worried about, 
for the boy who does so is only following a natural tend- 
ency, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will 
return better satisfied with home and school than before, 
and be none the worse for the adventure. It is as nor- 
mal and as harmless for a young boy to run away as it is 
for a young girl to weep or to be sentimental. 

It is this spirit of adventure, largely, this desire to be 
independent and to show early in life manly characteristics 
that leads most boys into certain habits that are either 
harmful or immoral. It is this reason, I am sure, that 
caused me first to smoke. The older boys with whom I was 
associating were smoking — big, black and very cheap cigars 
they were — and I had never smoked. As I recall now I 
had never felt any desire to do so nor had I had been given 
any parental suggestions on the subject. But when one 
of the fellows handed me a cigar, never guessing that I was 
quite innocent of any personal experience with smoking, 
I felt a thrill go through me. He had paid me a compliment 
as he might have done had he asked me to give him change 
for ten dollars, or as I might feel if some one should apply 
for the position of butler at my humble dwelling; and I 
smoked the bitter sickening thing to the last available 
shred thinking myself by so doing so much the more a man. 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 9 

The worst of it all was that, though it made me a trifle 
dizzy, it did not turn me pale nor nauseate me as it 
should have done, and cure me of the habit. On the 
contrary my success made me the more conceited and 
tended to confirm me in the opinion that I was very rapidly 
taking on manly characteristics, as I suppose such expe- 
riences affect other boys of the age I was at that time. 

I do not wish to be thought to condone the habit of 
smoking by this explanation of the cause which leads to 
it, for few people have been in better position to see how 
frequently it injures a boy's nervous system and reduces 
his eflaciency than I have been, and fewer people, perhaps, 
have been so willing as I to relinquish the habit when they 
recognized just how detrimental it was in its effects. 

The habit of swearing comes in the same class. I trust 
that none of my readers are addicted to profanity nor ever 
have been, but if it happens that any one has used or does 
use an occasional profane word somewhat stronger it may 
be than ' ' darn " or ' ' gosh " or " golly, " if he will recall for me 
when he first succumbed to the temptation, I am sure it 
was in an attempt to simulate courage, or strong manly 
emotion of some sort. It shows experience with the world 
and contact with bold men, the boy thinks, to be able to 
rip out a few careless oaths or other strong words. The 
habit is a low, vulgar, irreverent one, it is true, which to 
sensible thinking people can give only the impression of 
crudity and careless rearing, and bad taste, even if it goes 
no further than that and does not suggest actually bad 



10 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

morals; but to the boy himself who falls into such a 
habit there is often only the desire to be thought a man. 

It was a somewhat puzzled teacher who talked to 
one of his pupils not long ago. The boy was only seven- 
teen, he came of a very quiet, respectable and even 
religious family, and he had himself been in the habit 
of going to church and Sunday school quite regularly. 
No one had thought of accusing him of hypocrisy or 
inconsistency, and yet the night before he had been 
drunk. He could not himself quite explain how or why 
it had all happened. He had not planned the orgy de- 
liberately, but he had been working hard, he had had 
little recreation, and he had grown tired of the situation, 
and, to use his own words, had "just cut loose." Now 
that it was all over and he had a little time to think, 
he found no special satisfaction in the memory of his 
escapade, and, stranger still to his teacher, he had no 
special regret excepting that his unwise combining of 
various forms of intoxicants had made him horribly 
sick and had left him with a coated tongue and a dull 
headache. 

"I don't suppose I'll ever do it again," he said, ''but 
I just had to have that experience once in my life." 

He was learning slowly a fact that many boys and 
their teachers find it difiicult to learn, and that is that 
the main problem of the high school boy whether in 
school or out is the problem of self-control — control of 
the body, control of the mind, control of the emotions. 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 11 

The most important problem which the high school 
boy has is the discipline of his mind. It isn't easy to 
hold one's attention to a dull stupid book on mathe- 
matics or Latin when one would far rather be climbing 
a tree or playing at baseball, but it is often very neces- 
sary. A boy does not go to high school so much for 
the facts he learns in mathematics or Latin or chemistry 
as for the discipline he gets through learning these things. 
Of course every one needs information, and a boy may 
be excused if he thinks that the information he acquires 
at school is the main thing for which he spends his days 
and nights; but if he does think so, he is mistaken. The 
most important thing for any boy is to learn to think 
quickly and correctly, so to train his mind that it will 
do what he wants it to do within a definite time and 
at a definite time. 

^'I was in a hurry," you explain to your teacher or 
the boss when he calls your attention to the fact that 
the work you have accomplished is inaccurately or care- 
lessly done, "and did not have time to do the job as 
well as I could have done had I had more time;" or 
"My mind was wandering, and I could not get down 
to business," you offer as an alibi for not having a piece 
of work accomplished when it was called for. But the 
well-trained boy or man will be the master and not the 
slave of his mind, and will have so done his work in high 
school or in college that his brain will submit to his 
direction and will plan the composition or solve the 



12 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

mathematical problem, or get the right answer when 
these things need to be done. There is little time for 
inspiration when we are engaged in doing the regular 
work of the world. When there is a job to be done we 
can not wait until we "feel like it^' before taking up 
the work. If he has developed these qualities of regular 
work and concentration of mind which it is possible 
for every high school boy to develop, he can do what 
has to be done whether he feels like it or not. Men could 
not wait until they were emotionally prepared when 
they were called into battle; they went to the front when 
the call came; they went "over the top" on the second. 
They had been trained to be ready at any time, and a 
boy's mind should be so trained. 

Now an athlete soon learns that no matter how physi- 
cally clever he may be, no matter how much natural 
strength of body or fleetness of limb he may possess, 
he will never really excel unless he practices regularly, 
unless he is constantly striving to do his best and to 
make each succeeding best a little better than was the 
former. It is often very difl&cult, however, for the high 
school boy or for his older and presumably wiser brother 
to recognize the fact that the training of his mind is 
not materially different from the training of his body. 
A clever, quick-witted boy can pick up a lot of informa- 
tion if he keeps his eyes and ears open; he can, in truth, 
with little or no concentrated study pick up quite enough 
to get by his high school examinations creditably or even 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 13 

to be excused from them, if that is the custom of the 
school, on account of his cleverness, and still have dis- 
ciplined his mind very little. Unless he studies regularly, 
unless he pushes himself often to do his intellectual 
best, he will train his mind as inadequately as the athlete 
trains his body when he practices irregularly and never 
does his best. 

"I don't see why George failed in college," I heard a 
mother say not long ago. "He never studied in high 
school, and yet he managed to get fine grades." 

She did not realize that she had herself given the explana- 
tion. The high school boy who is so clever that he never 
has to "crack" a book, as they say, who has never 
submitted even for a brief time to mental drudgery, who 
doesn't pretty frequently settle down and dig his level best, 
is going to have trouble later with his brain, for sometime 
when he will want it to work, it will rebel like a balky ill- 
trained horse. It will run away from him as he ran away 
from his duties at home. The high school boy in many 
cases knows little about concentration and less about 
hard, consistent study. That is why he fails sometimes 
when he goes to college, and quite as often as not it is 
the clever boy in high school who fails when he gets to 
college. 

Regular study hours, the doing of difficult things well, 
the holding of oneself to accuracy and rapidity of thinking, 
concentration of attention upon a definite problem or 
piece of work for a reasonable time — these are some of the 



14 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

methods which any boy may employ for training himself 
to think. 

A boy's body ouglit to be trained as well as his mind. 
It is, of course, possible to find illustrations of men dis- 
tinguished for their intellectual achievments who have 
had frail, ill-developed bodies, but this is the exception 
and not the rule. The muscles that are developed and 
trained early are more easily trained and more perma- 
nently as well, for the physical skill learned in youth is 
soon recovered in ol.d age, even, if apparently forgotten. 

I watched a man, nearly sixty years of age, not long ago 
play a tennis match with a young fellow. The older man 
had played little in thirty years, and he seemed rather slow 
and awkward at first. Gradually, however, his muscles 
responded to the impulse of his brain; his old tricks came 
back to him, he recovered his serve, he placed his balls with 
surprising accuracy. He was winded a little, perhaps, 
when the set was ended, but he had won against a very 
worthy opponent. 

The high school boy growing as quickly as he does is 
awkward. He will remain in that condition unless he 
trains his body rigidly and regularly. He should learn to 
swim and to row a boat and to ride a horse; to run and 
climb and jump. He should develop skill in as many out- 
of-door games as possible such as golf and baseball and 
tennis. If he can learn to wrestle and box and dance so 
much the better. So far as he has control over his body 
he will find it easier to exercise control over his emotions. 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 15 

The ability to stand on one's feet and speak is almost 
as much a matter of the body as of the mind. If a boy 
knows how to manage his feet and what to do with his 
hands and how to stand erect, he will find usually, that he 
has enough in his head out of which to make a pretty fair 
speech. Every boy in high school ought to practice suf- 
ficiently to be able to speak without having his hands shake 
or his knees tremble, and once he has learned, he is quite 
unlikely ever to forget. 

I asked a very effective public speaker not long ago if 
his ability to speak well was natural or acquired. 

''I was the shyest sort of boy," was his reply, "I 
stammered and hesitated and turned cold with fright when- 
ever I got on my feet to speak. I determined, even while 
I was in high school, to learn to talk extemporaneously, 
and I forced myself to do so whenever I had a chance, and 
to speak as correctly and as much to the point as I could. 
Every boy can learn if he tries." 

In addition to controlling his mind and his body, 
one of the most important things that a boy just enter- 
ing upon youth should learn is the discipline and control 
of his desires and his emotions. All sorts of new emotions 
and desires and passions rush upon the fourteen-year-old 
boy, and in so far as he subdues and controls and directs 
these, he will become a strong man. It is his failure to 
do this that causes him to run away from home, or to 
learn to smoke and to swear and to develop habits of 
mind and of body that are unclean and immoral. It is as 



16 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

often as not first from ignorance that he does these things, 
ignorance of the fact that it is he and not his environ- 
ment that is changing. He often blames his parents 
or the conditions under which he lives for his discon- 
tent and unhappiness, while the truth is that all these 
new feelings and desires which are striving to get control 
of him are the result of sexual changes which are going 
on in his body, and which are causing him to look at 
life from an altogether different angle. A most important 
thing for him now and for the future is that he learn 
to control these desires and not that he let them control 
or subdue him. 

All sorts of temptations will come to him at this time. 
If he can be made to understand that his body with all 
its parts is a sacred thing which his creator has given 
into his care to keep clean and strong and undefiled, if 
he can turn aside vulgar suggestions, if he will refrain 
from impure words and impure thoughts, and impure acts 
of all sorts, he will learn self-control of immeasurable 
value to him not only as a boy but as a man. For all these 
things sap a growing boy^s strength, they reduce his 
vitality, they undermine his character, they make him less 
able to think and, worst of all, they make him far less a 
man. 

Bad sexual habits in the developing boy are the greatest 
evil of which he can be guilty. They take away his 
initiative, they increase his self-consciousness, they rob 
him of his physical strength, and they weaken his mind. It 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 17 

is only by living a clean, self-controlled sexual life 
that a boy can make the most of his physical and men- 
tal powers. 

The boy of fourteen begins usually to take his first 
real interest in society when he enters high school. He is 
making his first real friends, and he is coming to realize 
for the first time the basis upon which friendship is formed. 
Here again self-control and discipline are necessary. A 
boy^s friendships determine his character as much as any 
influence which operates in his fife. Very few of us have 
formed alone the habits that possess us, but on the con- 
trary we have done so in connection with one or more of 
our friends. When a high school boy cuts class or learns to 
smoke or stays out late at night or falls into any sort 
of irregularity, no one who has any sane knowledge of 
human nature ever supposes that he was alone when he 
did so. The fourteen-year-old forms into groups, he or- 
ganizes little exclusive societies, he has his particular pals 
with whom he consorts and schemes and under whose in- 
fluence he develops character and leadership. 

In all these close relationships which grow up between 
boys of high school age there is invariably a leader. All 
make suggestions and present plans, but in every group 
of boys there is some one whose opinion is paramount, 
whose word and whose decision is law. Now at the outset 
any boy may determine, negatively at least, with whom 
he will associate; after relationships are strongly formed, 
however, it is not so easy, for it is always a much more 



18 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

simple matter to evade or to decline an association than 
it is to break it after it has been made. Before he 
enters high school a boy's friends have not always been 
entirely of his own choosing. They have been deter- 
mined by his parents, by his immediate neighbors, by the 
friendships which his father and mother had made for him 
and with him. To a certain extent, until he shall himself 
go away from home, this will continue to be true, but, far 
more than he has ever been at liberty to do so before, he 
will, when he enters high school, be left very much to his 
own devices in the choice of his friends. It is most impor- 
tant that he choose wisely, for upon his choice depend his 
habits, his ideals, his character. If his friends develop into 
a fast lot, and smoke and swear and waste their time, he 
will be more than likely to follow; if they are quiet and 
studious and clean minded, he is pretty sure to adopt the 
same conservative tactics. A boy, as well as a man, is 
known by the friends he keeps, and can with the greatest 
difficulty follow a line of conduct different from that which 
these same friends follow. 

"I don't have to do what they do," a boy often says 
when warned against certain careless or evil companions, 
but the facts usually prove quite the contrary, and 
whether he wills it or not, he soon takes up the practices 
that his friends set for him. 

It is a great opportunity which is offered a boy who 
goes to high school. In these days, however, when in 
most communities it is the rule rather than the exception 



THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 19 

for boys to go, the privilege is not infrequently valued 
rather lightly. The boy goes, not from any serious pur- 
pose on his own part or any special desire for training, 
but because it is the custom, because his parents have 
desired it, and because all the other boys in his class are 
going. Possibly it is better to go for these reasons than not 
to go at all, but if added to these there is also the eagerness 
on his part to train his mind, to add to his store of infor- 
mation, to prepare himself better for the work which he 
must take up later in life, and especially if there is for 
him some interest, some Hne of study which he very much 
desires to carry on, his chances of getting somewhere 
will be materially increased. No one can get far in any 
line of work without interest. The work we do without 
joy in the doing is pretty sure to be badly done. 

Intellectual work is not unlike physical. A group of 
laborers is engaged upon a piece of work near my office. 
I can look out of my window and see them as they gather 
in the morning. Some of them come early and sit on the 
curb and smoke or talk to each other; others come up 
at the last minute. When the whistle sounds announc- 
ing the hour to begin, few of them go to their work with 
any enthusiasm or apparent pleasure. They drag them- 
selves to their feet with reluctance, they take up their 
tasks with indifference, and when the twelve o'clock 
whistle announces quitting time, they throw down their 
tools with a rapidity that is disheartening. It is hardly 
necessary to say that they accomplish little, their progress 



20 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

in their trade is slow. They are discontented, dissatis- 
fied, inefficient and unhappy. 

If a boy is going to high school, he should go with a 
spirit different from this. He is having a rare chance 
to develop his mind, to strengthen his character, to widen 
his chances of usefulness and success. This chance should 
inspire him to do his best, to meet and to solve his prob- 
lems with courage and manliness. 



THE COURSE 

When your grandfather went to high school, if fortu- 
nately he had the chance to do so, the course of study 
open to him was a pretty rigid one, very much indeed 
like an intellectual table d'hote at which he had little 
opportunity to pick and choose, but must take what was 
set before him and ask no questions. There was a gener- 
ous helping of mathematics with Latin and probably, 
Greek, to form the heavy part of the intellectual meal. 
Physics and chemistry often made up a part of the re- 
quirement, with history and English to serve as dessert 
to lighten the repast. There were few if any electives 
then, and little questioning on the part of the students 
as to whether or not what they were taking was likely 
to "do them any good" or was particularly to their 
individual tastes; they took their studies as they ate the 
simple nourishing food that was set before them at home 
by grandmother, in the belief that their elders knew best 
what was good for them. 

Now everything is different. The program of study in 
the well-equipped modern high school carries an intel- 
lectual bill of fare as varied and as bizarre as that repre- 
sented by the h la carte dining service of a first-class hotel. 
The boy entering high school today has so varied a program 
set before him, has so many things from which to choose, 

21 



22 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

that it is little wonder if he is not sometimes confused and 
at loss to know just what to choose. Unrestricted elec- 
tion is not possible in any high school, so far as I know, 
but the restrictions are so limited that the actual results 
amount almost to that. High school boys have so great 
a variety put before them that they often become over 
fastidious and finical in their tastes and so hard to please 
that they refuse to show interest in, or to cultivate an 
appetite for, anything. A dozen different subjects of 
which his grandfather would scarcely have known the 
names, from agronomy to pharmacy, are now found in 
many a high school boy's program. 

Even if the boy is sensible enough to recognize the 
difficulty and the danger he is in, he will not always find 
it easy to get intelligent advice. There is a wide difference 
of opinion these days as to just what is best for a boy to 
study. There are those who think he ought to choose 
only what interests him, only what may be put to immedi- 
ate and practical use. There is no greater educational 
fallacy than this insistence that we should always make 
a student's work interesting, and that if he can see 
no practical end in what he is studying, there is no log- 
ical reason why he should go on with it. He should study, 
the argument is, only such subjects as he finds he has 
special fitness and liking for. The lines of least resist- 
ance are the lines for him to follow. ''Make it easy or 
cut it out." 

A young fellow will not always get a great deal of help 



THE COURSE 23 

by going to his father or his mother. They may not have 
had a high school experience themselves, and even if they 
have had, things are done very differently now from what 
they were twenty-five years ago, and educational affairs are 
managed in quite another way than when your father was 
young. Anyway fathers are often thought old-fashioned 
and tremendously behind the times by their young sons, 
and it is not always easy for boys to take the father's 
advice even if the fathers are willing to give it. Fathers, 
too, fall into the same educational jargon that they hear 
about them without always thinking seriously on the 
problems of education as they are presented to young boys. 

Teachers, it is true, ought to be able to give dependable 
advice, because it is their business to know something 
definite about educational matters, but too many teachers 
are specialists, or think they are, and are too much impressed 
with the importance of the subject which they themselves 
teach to be able to give unprejudiced advice. It is a rare 
teacher who when asked will advise a boy against taking a 
subject which he himself teaches. As a result, in most 
cases, the boy is left to make his own decision and 
within the limits of his possible elections, to rely upon 
his own judgment as to what he shall study. 

In making this choice he is pretty likely to be influenced 
by popular opinion, by what some of the other fellows are 
taking, and by his own personal tastes and tendencies. 
Few people would work if circumstances did not require 
it, and fewer still would voluntarily choose to do disa- 



24 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

greeable or unpleasant things, and a young boy least of 
all is likely to do so. Very naturally, then, if allowed to 
determine his own program, he picks out what he likes 
best, not stopping to inquire whether or not what gives 
him the most pleasure is likely to do him the most 
good. 

"Why did you drop chemistry?" I asked a neighbor 
boy in high school not long ago. 

"I didn't care for it," was his reply, "and I don't 
see any reason in studying anything I don't care for, 
do you?" 

I really did, and I tried to tell him that every one has 
all through life, every day usually, to do many things 
that are not pleasing, and that the sooner one begins, 
the easier the task becomes. 

He shies, often at what he considers difficult. If he 
reasons badly, he avoids, as far as possible, mathematics 
and chemistry and physics. If he has a poor verbal 
memory he passes up Latin and modern languages argu- 
ing when questioned on the subject, that he can get just 
as much good out of something else that he finds more to 
his liking. If he finds spelling difficult or the composition 
of themes puzzling he dodges such work as well as he can 
and explains his course of action by saying that he "never 
could spell or write a good theme, anyway." He fails 
in doing so to recognize the fact that one of the main 
purposes of education is to help him to do more easily 
these and other things which he may find hard to do. A 



THE COURSE 25 

normal mind can be made to work successfully along al- 
most any line, if the boy to whom it belongs will apply 
himself persistently to the difficult subject. There is 
notliing so sure in any sort of endeavor to bring defeat 
as the admission at the outset that defeat is very probable, 
and there is no intellectual joy so sweet as the successful 
accomplishment of a task that was thought difficult or 
impossible. The boy who says he is going to fail seldom 
does anjrthing else. 

Just the other day a boy was telling me, with the greatest 
exultation showing in his face, of his experience with what 
the teacher had called "the hardest problem in the book." 
The boy did not find mathematics easy, often he was 
satisfied with working the simpler problems at the be- 
ginning of the assignment trusting to luck that he would 
not be called upon to explain any of the "stickers" 
when it came to the recitation. This time, however, his 
ambition was stirred, his "spunk was up," he said, and 
he determined he would work that problem if it took all 
night. Well, it did take mighty nearly all night, but he 
stuck to it, and got it right, and the joy of mental conquest 
was a satisfaction and an inspiration to him for the rest 
of his high school course. So is it to every boy who strug- 
gles. The benefits of such accompHshments, too, will 
not end with a boy^s graduation from high school. Forty 
years afterwards he will still be able to feel the self- 
rehance which he gained through his boyish conquest of 
difficulty; forty years afterwards he will be stronger to 



26 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

meet unexpected trials by having overcome this mental 
hardship. 

"What are you going to take next half year?'' I asked 
Donald at mid-year. 

"I don't know," he replied. "Do you know any snap 
course?" 

The snap, whatever it is, will get a boy nowhere ex- 
cepting to give him credits, and what one ought to 
want out of four years of high school is training that 
will make one happier and more able to think and that 
will fit one better to do the hard but necessary things 
ofUfe. 

Next to the interesting and the easy, the practical is 
what now appeals to the majority of boys. There is 
no sort of bunkum in educational matters that appeals 
now so strongly to the public as that which is presented 
with the label "practical" on it. It is like the old "made 
in Germany " which used so to appeal to us when we found 
it on an article in which we were interested, and it is 
about as cheap and worthless in its significance. Our 
high school courses are crammed full of subjects which 
are supposed to be eminently practical and which will 
assist those who have taken them almost immediately 
to make money or to get a job or to do something. Type- 
writing, stenography, cooking, dressmaking, millinery, 
plumbing, typesetting, manual training, pharmacy, busi- 
ness English and business arithmetic, whatever these 
last two subjects may be, may all be found in one or another 



THE COURSE 27 

of our high school curricula, and they appeal very strongly, 
some of them, to boys, because they suggest an inmiediate 
use and application of knowledge. 

I am not now meaning to imply that many of them 
are not of use; in fact very likely each is of some benefit 
and may be put to immediate use more readily, apparently 
at least, than a good many other subjects which are in 
the high school course. They are more easily learned, 
however; they require less brain power, and they are 
more quickly forgotten than are those subjects that re- 
quire concentration of mind and logical reasoning. 

"Of what possible use could Latin be to me?" George 
protested the other day when his father was advising 
him to include it in his high school course. "I'm not 
going to teach, I'm not going to be a lawyer, and nobody 
talks Latin these days." 

There is a curious, though possibly an explainable, 
point of view with many young people now-a-days that 
only the teacher or the lawyer could ever find any use for 
S3 dead a language as Latin — the teacher because every- 
body expects him to have had the subject, and the lawyer 
because many legal terms are still expressed in Latin, 
and the lawyer is supposed to know how to translate 
them. I suppose the real facts are that neither of these 
men needs Latin in his business more than any other in- 
telligent or educated person does. 

I am no special advocate of foreign languages, and 
especially of dead languages, and have no special fluency 



28 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

either in reading or speaking any one. I have had some 
training in three languages besides my native tongue, 
but if I am in any degree able to estimate the relative 
benefits to me of the various subjects which I pursued 
preparatory to entering college I have no hesitancy in 
saying that my study of Latin meant more to me than 
anything else I did and means more to me today. His- 
tory bored me, so I worked very little at it; mathematics 
required little study on my part, so though I received 
high grades in it I really derived little discipline from it, 
science I liked, but it did not require any strenuous effort 
to get by the examinations. Latin was to me the most 
difficult of all. I toiled at it; I dug out laboriously each 
word and phrase and sentence; I committed my declen- 
sions and my paradigms with painful slowness, but I held 
myself to the task, and I accomplished it with rather 
more than average success. 

I can read today, after thirty years, with some fluency 
every Latin text I ever studied. I got more idea of 
concentration and accuracy and coordination out of the 
subject than from anything else. It was the one thing 
that gave me mental discipline; it was the thing that 
required of me most serious study. Perhaps it might 
not accomplish the same result for others; perhaps for 
you that result would be brought about through some 
other means; but for me, it was the Latin that did it, 
so when I hear a boy say, "What possible good could 
Latin do me? '' I tell him my story, and I try to show him 



THE COURSE 29 

that it will do for him what it did for me if he will go at it 
with a determination to do it well. 

I once heard a practical man, one of the leading 
engineers of the country in fact, and a man trained at 
a well-known technical school in New England, make 
the statement that if he were given the privilege of 
going to school or college again he would never elect 
anything that was considered practical. What he really 
meant, he explained, was that as he saw education it is 
not for immediate and practical use so much as for train- 
ing and discipline of the mind, for the development of 
ideals, for the setting of standards. High school is not 
so much to give a boy specific information as it is so to 
prepare him to get that information for himself if he ever 
needs it, and needing it that he may have a brain suffi- 
ciently well trained intelligently to use the information 
when he gets it. 

Of course it would be quite unwise and even untrue 
to assert that the practical things one finds in a high school 
course do not in a measure conduce to discipline and 
training of the mind. Many of them are both practical 
and disciplinary, but as a rule the so-called practical 
subjects that are more and more creeping into the high 
school course and that make the strongest appeal to 
the boy and quite as often to his parents, have little disci- 
plinary value, have less cultural value, and are seldom 
used practically after the boy leaves high school. The 
boy who is fed-up on these subjects often has a hard 



30 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

time when he is called upon to work out problems which 
require logical and consistent thinking. 

Sometimes, too, a boy is tempted to "specialize" in 
electing his course in high school. He makes up his mind 
to prepare for a definite line of work, and he begins early 
to load up his course with all that is offered in a single 
department of work. This is usually an unwise thing 
to do. It gives a one-sided training, it develops a rather 
badly balanced mind. The boy who runs to languages, 
or to commercial subjects, or to drawing and manual 
training because he likes these subjects, or because he 
thinks they will better prepare him for a specific sort of 
work, even though he is allowed to graduate from high 
school on such a specialized program, has missed the vital 
purpose of a high school course. After he has been taught 
to think, after he has laid a broad foundation, a boy can 
specialize to much better advantage in anything he likes. 

So far I have seemed to be satisfied with condemning 
certain practices followed in choosing a course in high 
school, without giving much suggestion as to what is 
best to do. It is a foolish man, however, who spends 
his energies entirely in condemning and tearing down and 
who does not suggest something definite and constructive. 

There is a certain necessary preparation which every 
boy should get in high school if he intends to go to college 
or if he is looking forward to a specific sort of work. The 
college entrance requirements are now about as flexible 
as they are likely to be made for a while, and they are 



THE COURSE 31 

about as liberal as any high school course ought to be, 
and yet, if one is to enter college, there are a few things 
which are essential in all cases, and in technical colleges 
there are additional requirements. For instance one can 
not enter any course in engineering without having a 
fairly thorough foundation in mathematics and physics. 
At least a year and a half of algebra are required with a 
year of plane geometry and a half year of solid geometry. 
Some institutions require in addition advanced algebra 
and trigonometry. Every high school principal is ac- 
quainted with this fact and ought to make it evident to 
his students, though he does not always do so. If the boy 
has the foresight to inquire he will undoubtedly get the 
information he desires, but every year I find fellows who 
wish to enter a course in college for which they do not 
have the requirements, and these requirements, had they 
known them, they might very easily have met. 

The man who expects later in college to go on with 
English or chemistry or foreign language should at least 
find out the minimum requirements in these subjects, 
for entrance to college, and should meet them, so that 
he may not later be handicapped on account of not hav- 
ing done the thing which he could easily have accomplished. 

There are a great many people who maintain that there 
is a vast difference between preparing for college and 
preparing for life. These people hold that because 
one does not expect to enter college after he is through 
with high school, he is therefore excusable if he omits from 



32 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

his course such subjects as do not appeal to him either 
as interesting or as practical. There is in their arguments 
the inference that college entrance requirements are un- 
reasonable or freakish, or that they do not furnish a 
young fellow with the training that will be of any material 
value, or at least of the greatest value to him, should he 
not go to college. I believe that quite the contrary is true, 
and that the course prescribed for entrance to college is 
on the whole as good a course as a boy can select no matter 
what he intends doing. Such a course will teach him 
logical thinking, and the ability to think is quite as nec- 
essary out of college as in it; whatever one undertakes and 
carries through that causes him to think is of the greatest 
advantage to him in any later enterprise. Since no 
boy is likely while he is in high school absolutely to 
know that he will or will not go to college, the safest plan 
would seem to be so to choose his course in high school 
that he may meet the college entrance requirements 
should he ever want to do so. 

Every boy should undertake something in high school 
that he finds hard to do, something that will make him 
bring his books home at night and do a little studying after 
school hours. There is always a question about the train- 
ing the boy is getting who never has to do any studying 
at home, who never finds anything that causes him to 
dig, who does not know what it means to work his brain 
at times as hard as it is capable of working. If you will 
ask any man, young or old, out of what experience, mental 



THE COURSE 33 

or physical, he has received the most valuable training 
he will almost invariably answer that it was from the 
experience which forced him to work the hardest. It is 
through vigorous and regular exercise that any muscle 
or any faculty is developed. 

I knew "Mike" Mason before he entered high school; 
and "Mike" developed later into the best two-miler the 
Western Conference has ever had. He had no special 
talents athletically at the outset, unless one should admit 
that persistence and willingness to work hard and to 
sacrifice whenever it is necessary are special talents. Mike 
wanted to be a good runner, and he was willing to pay 
the price. He trained regularly all through his high school 
course; he worked hard when other boys, some of them 
as good prospects as he, perhaps, had long ago given up 
the contest and had gone over to join the rooters on the 
bleachers; he worked hard when hard work was far from 
pleasant; he gave up everything that seemed to interfere 
with his prospects, but when he was ready for college he 
was beginning to be counted as one of the coming athletes 
of the state, and before he graduated he was known as the 
best runner of the middle west. And it was largely through 
hard work, through doing his best, through his willing- 
ness constantly to tackle something hard that Mike 
trained his muscles and developed his mind, and out- 
stripped his competitors in the race. 

Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip, of New York, in a recent 
address to young people said, "If you are starting out 



34 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

to make a success in life, don't choose the job that offers 
you the easiest time or the most money. Choose rather 
the one that requires the hardest work and furnishes 
the greatest opportunity for your development." Now 
a boy trains his mind as he learns a profession or trains 
his muscles, by putting it to the test and seeing what 
it can regularly do when it is pushed. It is for this reason 
that I should advise a boy, no matter what his regular 
curriculum in the high school may be, always to select 
some course that will give his mind a good work out. 
I heard an architect say once that to be worth much 
in his profession an architect had to be able to do his work 
rapidly and to do it well. There are a great many people, 
he alleged, who can turn out a lot of work in a short time, 
but it proves inaccurate or worthless; there are a great 
many others whose work is beautifully and carefully 
done, but it takes them all summer to get anything ac- 
complished. Neither sort of person will get far in his 
profession. Out of his high school course every boy should 
learn concentration — that is the ability to center the 
mind on a definite piece of work and to bring it to com- 
pletion within a definite and reasonable time. Some 
boys learn this trick more easily than others, but it is 
quite possible for every boy so to acquire control of his 
mind that it will accomplish what he wants it to do within 
the time at his disposal. Possibly the best way to bring 
this about is through setting for himself mental "stunts" 
and trying to see in how short a time these may be satis- 



THE COURSE 35 

factorily accomplished, just as when we were boys we 
used to set for ourselves physical tasks. 

"If you will get the potatoes hoed by three o'clock," 
mother used to say to us boys, "you can go fishing for 
the rest of the afternoon.'' 

How quickly conversation and youthful horseplay 
stopped; the weeds fell before our devastating hoes like 
the Huns before the marines. We plied our task with 
a vigor and a persistency that brought it to a glorious 
finish with time to spare before three o'clock. 

It is so that a boy ought to learn to drive his mind, 
yet few young fellows come to college or go out from high 
school into life with much idea of mental concentration 
or much training in it. Their minds have a tendency to 
jump from one thing to another with the skill of an acrobat. 
They find it difficult to concentrate their attention on 
a single subject for fifteen minutes, and, both in high 
school and college, they are handicapped by this lack of 
mental control. 

The best student I have ever known was so not so much 
from superior quality or alertness of mind as from his 
unusual ability to concentrate and hold his attention 
on what he was doing. He could get more done in an 
hour than most fellows could accomplish in two. When 
he settled to his books nothing moved him or diverted 
his attention. He would sit for an hour never stirring 
a muscle excepting as he had to turn the pages of the book 
he was reading. When he was at work he neither spoke 



36 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

to his companions nor seemed to take any account of 
what they are doing or saying. This is a quality of 
mind which every boy would do well to cultivate, and it 
is a quality which can be developed through effort and 
practice. 

A boy should get a certain breadth of view from his 
high school course. It should take him to other coun- 
tries than his own and to other worlds. It should interest 
him in the great people and the great movements of 
thought of the world, and should stimulate in him a desire 
to read and to know more and to see more of what the 
world contains. It should be for him the beginning and 
not the end of an interest in history and science, and litera- 
ture; in inventions and discoveries, and manufactures. If 
it is to do this, the boy must have shown interest in more 
than one subject in the high school; he must have done 
more than merely pass in the various subjects which he has 
elected; he must be taken out of his own narrow environ- 
ment, his interest and his breadth of view must be broad- 
ened, and he must see life as a different and a better 
thing than it was before he took up a high school course. 

A boy should get from his high school course better 
taste, better manners, more interest in poetry and music 
and art and whatever is idealistic and beautiful. He 
should be less selfish than when he began his course of 
study, more interested in other people, more ambitious. 

Besides choosing subjects that will require hard work, 
that will develop concentration, broaden his view and 



THE COURSE 37 

develop his taste and his ideals, every boy should regu- 
larly have something in his course of study that he likes. 
Doing what one likes may not always be so profitable 
but it is more interesting than doing the difficult. Life, 
and especially high school life, should not be all drudgery 
or it will fail of its main purpose Every day's work 
should be looked forward to with interest and pleasure, 
and this can be only when the program of studies is in 
some part at least pleasing to the boy. We have all eaten 
the carrots or the common bread and butter we had no 
taste for in order that we might the sooner get at the 
dessert which we so much more enjoyed, and we shall 
often find the same condition existing in the boy's atti- 
tude toward his high school course. He will stand a 
certain amount of unpleasant work provided there is 
mixed up with it something he enjoys. 

The question of carrying an over-schedule often comes 
up. Some boys say that they always do their best 
work when they are carrying the heaviest intellectual 
load. This means that only when they are under pressure, 
when they are being urged on by surrounding conditions 
do they develop concentration and conservation of their 
time. It is undoubtedly true that for some temperaments 
this sort of goading is most conducive to good work. The 
less some boys have to do, the less they will do, and vice 
versa. Simons was one of that sort. When he carried 
a light schedule he loafed and cut class and fooled away 
his time generally. It was only when his teacher told 



38 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

him that he had no shadow of a chance to pass that he 
got down to business. When he was metaphorically 
pushed against the wall with some one at his throat, he 
roused himself and fought for his life, and he usually 
won the contest. He was like a man who really never 
makes an effort to swim until he thinks himself drowning. 

Under ordinary circumstances a normal schedule is 
best. There is little to be gained from finishing high 
school ahead of one's class. It is pretty hard if not practi- 
cally impossible to develop in a boy of sixteen the judgment 
and the power of thinking that we expect him to have 
at eighteen. The time element counts more than we 
are often willing to admit, and the high school course 
finished in three years is quite often worth no more 
than seventy-five per cent of the same course pursued 
normally and completed in four years. If a boy has been 
unlucky, if he is behind his class, then it is sometimes an 
advantage for him to speed up by carrjdng more than 
the normal amount. In most cases, however, it is a 
mistake for him to do so. A normal schedule gives a boy 
time to think, time to read, time to do his work well. It 
is always better to do a moderate amount of work with 
credit than to skim indifferently through twice as much. 
The boy who just gets by misses the most of the good 
that he might get out of his course. 

The high school course for a very large number of boys 
is the end of their formal educational training; they go 
no further excepting as they acquire training from the 



THE COURSE 39 

practical experiences of business or industrial life. A boy- 
should carry away from high school then, something more 
than a diploma inscribed with a list of the subjects he 
has pursued. He should have grounded himself in the ele- 
ments of a number of subjects, he should have learned 
at least the beginnings of logical thinking and be ready 
to solve whatever problem is put to him, he should 
have some knowledge of literature, he should know 
how to write a correct sentence, and he should not count 
either reading or writing a task but rather a pleasure. 
His high school course should have prepared him for 
entrance to college, or, if that privilege is denied him, it 
should have given him a helpful and satisfactory training 
for entering upon the practical duties of life. 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 

Kenneth, my next door neighbor, who is a senior in 
high school, has a habit of dropping in on me every few 
days to talk things over. He is a healthy normal young 
fellow of seventeen who generally gets on well with his 
teachers; whose work is being creditably done if his final 
grades are any indication of success, and who has as little 
fault to find with the world as the average boy of his age 
who has no responsibilities and who has never made sac- 
rifices. 

We discuss all sorts of topics, from the probable fu- 
ture of the Bolsheviki to the latest bill at the Orpheum, 
but I am rather interested to notice that unless I drag 
in the topic myself he seldom has anything to say of his 
studies. Physics, Vergil, Shakspere, and history engage 
his thoughts, or are supposed to do so, five days in the 
week, but he seldom of his own volition, makes these the 
topic of conversation, unless it be to rail against one or 
the other of them. He talks freely of the football team, of 
his own accomplishments and possibilities as a member 
of it, and of the determination of the eleven to clean up 
Springfield and win a championship. He is interested 
slightly in the fortunes of the high school debating team, 
although debate to him is about as manly a sport as knit- 
ting for the soldiers. He dilates at length on the success of 

40 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 41 

the last high school dance, and when I ask him sympathet- 
ically about Clara, I know that I have opened up a topic 
that can not be anything like adequately discussed at one 
sitting. The incidental things connected with his high 
school life seem to him the most interesting and the most 
vital. He gives considerable time and thought to the 
"other things" but, outside of class at least, none to his 
studies. 

I am convinced that he is not unique in this respect. Al- 
though I have no boys of my own, I have frequently had 
them in my household. I have for some time, also, acted 
as guardian to two young fellows who are in a western 
academy of standing, and from them I receive weekly 
letters, usually written with the ostensible purpose of 
giving me information with regard to the intellectual, and 
physical progress of the writers, but actually to offer an 
opportunity to ask that their regular allowances be in- 
creased or at least not delayed in transit. In these letters 
I get no discussion of studies, and seldom any reference 
to them. Were it not for the friendly communications of 
the principal, and the regular bills for school supplies 
which I receive, I should have no knowledge, even, of what 
subjects, the boys are pursuing. Their letters are made 
up chiefly of optimistic predictions as to their athletic 
successes, of accounts of escapades (harmless of course, 
and quite within the regulations of the school), of dra- 
matics, and of anticipated pleasures at social functions 
with the Ferry Hall girls. Even the attaining of a high 



42 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

grade, which is a rare enough occurrence, may not be men- 
tioned at all. At Christmas or Easter time when they 
visit me, I find that the dullest topic of conversation 
which I can introduce is studies. 

I am not suggesting that this is out of the normal; it 
is, perhaps, quite in accord with the principle that the 
thing which touches us most deeply and which is closest 
to our hearts we are sometimes least likely to speak 
about. Possibly the high school boy considers it "shop'' 
and thinks that he gets enough of it in the regular daily 
routine, and had best forget it when away from it. Pos- 
sibly there is a certain feeling that one who talks about his 
studies is likely to be thought a grind, and however credit- 
able it may be to work like a Trojan at football or track or 
baseball or in getting ready for a class dance, it has not yet 
become so generally popular through regular persistent 
effort to excel at one's studies. Why, I have never known. 
If one excels in his studies, it is in the minds of most boys 
creditable only if one does so without hard work, and it is 
not a thing to boast about like breaking the school record 
in the quarter mile. 

Notwithstanding all this, however, a boy's studies con- 
stitute his business during the four years he is in high 
school. They are the main thing. They ought to have 
his best effort and his best thought. Father thinks so; 
most of the neighbors feel that way; his teachers have no 
doubt of it. No matter how good an appearance you make 
at the Junior dance, no matter how widely advertised you 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 43 

are as a pole vaulter or how enchantingly you warble on the 
Glee Club, if you do not carry your work creditably at the 
end of the semester, you are a failure so far as high school 
is concerned. It isn't enough that you make the debating 
team or are elected class president or are known as the 
most popular boy in school; it's the studies that count. 

Too many boys go to high school without much definite 
purpose. They expect to go to college, and high school 
is part of the necessary routine for the accomplishment 
of that result. All the other fellows are going, and it is 
easier to go than not to do so. They would rather con- 
tinue going to school, as one boy told me, than go to work; 
and so it goes. If they were asked what their reasons are — 
if any boy who is reading this essay were to ask himself — 
the answer would in all probability be that they ''wanted 
an education, " whatever that may mean. I am not sure 
that with all the experience I have had and with all the 
definitions I have read, I could myself give an adequate 
explanation of what education really means, but I am 
sure that it means in some degree training of the mind, and 
that such training comes through application and regular 
rigid exercise of the brain, through the accomplishing of 
mental tasks that are not easy and not always pleasant. 
Every young boy knows that if he expects to amount to 
anything as an athlete he must train regularly and persist- 
ently, that he must deny himself many things which he 
would otherwise enjoy, and that he must not only con- 
stantly do his best, but that he must be striving all the 



44 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

time to make his best better. It is with some such spirit 
as this that a boy should go at his studies. He will never 
do very well unless he learns concentrated hard work. He 
will never increase his ability to think as he should un- 
less he tries to do well a good many things he doesn't like 
to do. 

If possible, have an object in view. Set some intellec- 
tual goal for yourself, and do not be satisfied until you 
have reached that point or gone beyond it. You will 
find, usually, that you can attain success more easily in 
some directions than in others. Do not be satisfied to be 
commonplace or merely to pass, but make up your mind 
that in some line or other you are going to be as good as 
the best at least, for your success in any one line of en- 
deavor will always give you more likelihood of success in 
anything else which you may undertake. The boy who 
gets away creditably with a difficult course in mathemat- 
ics or with an examination in Vergil which he finds dis- 
tasteful, will be so much the better able through self- 
confidence and persistence to win the girl of his choice or 
to make a creditable record at track. As you do well the 
intellectual tasks which are set for you today, you will 
accomplish more easily and more accurately the duties 
which are laid upon you twenty years from now, no matter 
what these duties may be. 

By far the largest percentage of poor work or of failures 
in high school comes not from the fact that boys are stu- 
pid or badly prepared in the elementary schools, or be- 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 45 

cause the amount of work they are asked to do is unreason- 
able or beyond their grasp, but because they do not do 
their work seriously or thoroughly at first; they have no 
well-organized plan of study; they are procrastinating, and 
wake up to the fact too late, that their studies are a real 
business to which they should have been giving regular 
attention from the beginning. Jones told me only yester- 
day that if he had learned his conjugations and his declen- 
sions carefully and thoroughly when he began his high 
school study of Latin, he would have been saved years of 
uncertain floundering through the classics. If you would 
give more careful attention to elementary algebra, you 
would not have heart failure later when you take the 
required courses in college mathematics. If boys took 
their work as seriously in September as they do in Jan- 
uary or immediately before the final examinations there 
would be a great many more honor students than failures. 

As a rule the task set for the average high school student 
is a very moderate one, and the amount and the character 
of the work required quite within the range of his ability. 
I have known a great many high school boys, but I have 
known few whose mental equipment was not adequate to 
the accomplishment of the work they had elected to do if 
they had gone at it in the right way when it was as- 
signed. The number of '^boneheads" is pretty limited. 

Have a regular time for study. Of course I appreciate 
the fact that most high schools have "study periods" 
between recitations and that a good many boys depend 



46 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

upon these to furnish adequate time for preparation, or if 
this should prove inadequate there is always the chance 
of studying ahead in class and being ready to recite when 
the teacher calls upon you, but this method is either in- 
adequate or a subterfuge and will not get you anywhere. 

"John is so quick at his books/' his fond mother tells 
me, "he never has to study." But I know John is com- 
ing up against a great surprise one of these days, for the 
boy who expects to get what he should out of his studies, 
ought to have at least a little regular time for hard study 
at home every day. The boy who never needs to open a 
book at home may be a bright boy, but he will seldom de- 
velop into a well-trained man; he is pretty sure to prove 
commonplace. 

Learn to do things within the time assigned to you. 
If there are problems to be handed in on Monday, do 
not put off solving them until the last minute and then 
have to give an excuse because you did not have time 
enough to i&nish them. If your theme is due on Thursday 
go at it early enough to get it done by that time. The 
boy who waits for an inspiration or who thinks it will 
be easier for him to write tomorrow than it is tonight, 
is more than likely to be fooled. No one but a poet 
ever waits for an inspiration, and the fellow who gets 
into the habit of delaying the doing of his work until he 
feels like it, soon finds that his eagerness for work con- 
stantly decreases, while the boy who goes at his work 
and gets it done in time no matter how he feels about it, 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 47 

discovers before long that he can work whenever he wants 
to do so. No man who has regular routine work to do 
can allow it to be a matter of inspiration or feeling. One 
of the main things for which brains are trained is that 
they may be made to work easily whenever the necessity 
arises. 

Perhaps the reason why boys court delay in the ac- 
complishment of assigned work is because there is so 
much time in which it may be done, and the task set 
for tomorrow seems so much easier of accomplishment 
than that which confronts us today; but work always 
grows more difficult as we allow it to pile up, and one 
is not, in general, likely to have more time tomorrow than 
he has today. 

Learn to depend upon your own efforts for the ac- 
compUshment of your work. I know that there is a 
certain comradeship developed between two boys who 
get their work together, and it is sometimes a tremendous 
timesaver, but it is very seldom best. If the result of 
study were accomplished when we got the answer to the 
problem, all that would sometimes be necessary would 
be to turn to the back of the book. The boy who works 
out his own problems, as he will usually have to do later 
in life, develops self-reliance, learns to trust his own 
judgment, gets the habit of standing on his own feet, 
and is the more likely to be honest and self-reliant at 
examination time. If you and Tom are working out the 
problems in algebra together there is always the tempta- 



48 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

tion to utilize his work as your own, to trade answers, 
and in reality to slight half the work. If it is translation 
instead of mathematics that is being worked out, the 
poorer student soon learns to rely upon the better and 
misses the training which comes from working out a hard 
task alone. 

Regularity of work counts for a tremendous lot in 
any line of business. Once get behind, and the damage 
is almost irreparable. I was talking to a discouraged 
high school sophomore today. 

'^I was a good student last year," he said, "and I'm 
sure I have brains enough to get on. I had rather light 
work this half year, and I should have carried it easily. 
I simply loafed and let the work pile up expecting to do 
it all in the end. When I awoke to my situation the pile 
was more than I could crawl over." 

Unless any boy at the very beginning learns to work 
regularly, he will have a hard time to learn later. It is 
almost impossible to play the ant after one has long been 
cast in the role of the grasshopper. 

It is not enough that a boy work regularly, he must 
apply himself to his work with concentration of mind. 
The fellow who puts in the most hours is not necessarily 
the best student. It is the one who works regularly and 
works hard as well — ^who has his whole mind on what 
he is doing — who will accomplish the most and who will 
get the best development out of his work. As I write 
this paper, I have been watching a young fellow sitting 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 49 

on the porch across the street from my office window, 
a book in his hand and his chair tilted back against the 
house wall. He is whistling to a passing dog now; he was 
engaged in conversation with a mate a few moments ago ; 
he hailed the ice cream cone man and did business with 
him at the beginning of the hour; and yet he will tell his 
friends at dinner time how hard he was grinding at his 
lessons all the afternoon. 

One of the poorest students with whom I have had to 
do was as regular in his work as the phases of the moon 
and as sure to be at his book as taxes, but he worked too 
much, and he had no concentration. He would go to 
sleep while writing his theme as readily as I did while 
reading it. He worked without method and without 
application, and so he failed to carry anything. The 
best student I have ever known — and by that I mean 
not only the man who was best in his studies, but in the 
"other things" — put in a very few hours at his work, 
but he studied every night, and when he worked his whole 
mind was directed toward what he wished to accomplish; 
he did not let anything come between him and what he 
was doing, and when he was through, he stopped and 
put his work away. He had more leisure time at his 
disposal than any of the rest of us. He won through 
regularity and concentration, and these qualities are 
usually to be discovered when a man, high school student 
or otherwise, succeeds. It is possible to learn concentra- 
tion. One must have interest, he must have the will to 



60 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

do, and he must be wide-awake enough to realize what it 
is that he is trying to accomplish. 

But the "other things'' are important; only slightly 
less important in fact than the studies themselves. How- 
ever much a boy may be devoted to his work he can not 
study all the time, and he should not be allowed to do so 
even if it were possible. As I remember my own secondary 
school course and try to estimate, as it is impossible justly 
to do, its present worth to me, I am inclined to value most 
highly some of the things that were connected only re- 
motely with the studies I was pursuing. These external 
things naturally would have been of little value to me un- 
less I had carried the work I was taking, for matters were 
so conducted in our home circle that a place would read- 
ily have been found for me on the farm had I shown any 
chronic inaptitude in securing grades. But granting that 
ability, these ''other things" seem to me of the greatest 
value. As an instructor I can seldom find much excuse for 
the boy who does not carry his work in high school; but 
the one who does not do more than this, no matter how 
high his scholastic standing may be, has missed a very 
large part of what every one should get from high school 
training. School life is very much a community life. No 
one can justly live to himself alone, and profit greatly 
from the life. He has his own private individual work to 
do, it is true, and he should do it; but he has also his obli- 
gations to his fellow students and to the community at 
large, and these he may not shirk. 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 51 

I heard a boy once boast that during his high school 
course he had never cut a class nor seen an athletic contest. 
I am not sure that either fact was a virtue, and notwith- 
standing that he now wears a badge won by high scho- 
lastic attainments, I think that his training and his sym- 
pathies might have been broader if his school interests 
had, perhaps, been varied enough to make it desirable for 
him sometimes to cut a class, or interesting to attend a 
ball game. I think his influence now would be wider. A 
boy's studies should give him famiUarity with ideas, and 
training in principles; and "other things" in which he in- 
terests himself should make him acquainted with people, 
and furnish him some opportunity to get experience in the 
management of erratic human beings. Whether the busi- 
ness which a young man finally takes up happens to be 
designing gas engines or preaching the gospel, he will find 
daily opportunities for the exercise of both sorts of 
training. 

It is a somewhat overworked and jaded joke that class 
valedictorians generally bring up as street car conductors 
or as hack drivers, not that I should like to underestimate 
the value of any one of these positions or the amount of 
intelligence required successfully to perform the work of 
either one of these worthy offices — and though, perhaps, 
it is a joke, one can occasionally find instances of students 
of the highest scholastic standing filling the most common- 
place positions simply from lack of initiative or ability to 
assume leadership. One such dropped in on me only a few 



62 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

days ago. I did not remember him at first; he seemed 
commonplace, unaggressive, without diplomacy. When 
he mentioned his name I recalled that he had been vale- 
dictorian of his class a dozen years ago. He had got no- 
where; he had lost every position he had held because he 
had no ability at leadership; he could not adjust himself 
to the peculiarities of other people. He was always at 
loggerheads with his boss. The lack of ability to get on 
with men often keeps a young fellow as it had kept him, 
from an opportunity to utilize his educational stock in 
trade. Social training then, association with man, is a 
very desirable thing. 

There are many ways in which such an association 
may be cultivated. The ordinary method which sim- 
ply for the sake of enjoyment takes a boy out among his 
fellows — and sometimes his fellows' sisters — is neither to 
be ignored nor worked too strenuously. Parties and pic- 
nics, social calls, and long quiet strolls when the moon is 
full are, in moderation, helpful, perhaps, but they should 
not be developed into a regular practice. Even a good 
thing may be overdone. It is exceedingly desirable that 
one should learn how to manage his hands and feet and 
tongue, but it is quite possible to devote too much time to 
acquiring skill of this sort. The boy who omits all so- 
cial life makes a mistake; the fellow who devotes a large 
part of his time to it is mushy. 

I have a strong belief in the value of athletics. It is 
true that some of the poorest students I have ever known 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 53 

have called themselves athletes because their main in- 
terest was physical rather than intellectual, but I have 
known more good students than poor ones who have been 
prominent in athletic events. The boy who goes into 
athletics sanely has a good chance of developing a strong 
body; both tradition and necessity demand that he live a 
temperate, healthy life, and his thinking powers and his 
ability to do mental work are likely to be stimulated by 
the regular exercise he must take. It is true that few stu- 
dents ever do themselves damage from working too hard, 
but a great many develop chronic indigestion and physi- 
cal worthlessness from sitting in stuffy rooms and taking 
no exercise. I should not go so far as to say that the ath- 
lete is usually a better student than the fellow who does 
not go in for such things, but he is usually a better all- 
around man than the other fellow. He has more stamina 
and endurance, and because of his symmetrical develop- 
ment he is more likely to make a success later in life than 
boys who have had no such training. For this reason as 
well as for the pleasure and relaxation in it, every student 
who can should go in for some athletic game. 

There are a good many societies in high school which 
will bid for the boy's time and attendance. Many very 
worthy people think most of these are wholly bad, and 
advise the boy to steer clear of them all as he would dodge 
smallpox and the tax collector. Most of these organiza- 
tions have their uses, however, and in the majority of 
cases they are good. Most boys would be helped by 



54 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

joining a debating society both on account of the per- 
sonal associations which they would cultivate, and for the 
training it would give them in speaking and writing. It 
is a great asset to be able to say easily what one has in his 
mind. Dramatics, declamation contests, musical or- 
ganizations, stunt shows in general give one a training 
which will later in life repay many times the eiffort en- 
tailed in the practice for these activities. 

There are political opportunities in high school which 
should not be overlooked. Class officers and manager- 
ships must be filled. Such work offers an excellent chance 
for the development of business sense and business ex- 
perience, and for widening one's influence and control of 
men. The necessary relationships which political activity 
requires develop resourcefulness, shrewdness, and a gen- 
eral understanding of human nature. It gives training in 
organizing men, in planning operations, in meeting un- 
expected situations. It is one of the best experiences a 
boy can have. It is often, too, a strong test of a boy's 
character, for, even in high school politics, there is con- 
stant opportunity for graft, for trickery, and for dis- 
honesty. The boy who goes through such a contest and 
comes out clean has had a test and a training which will 
prove invaluable to him. 

The four years you are in high school should mean 
something more than the mere acquaintance with facts, 
or the acquiring of information or the passing of ex- 
aminations; it should give you a knowledge of other 



STUDIES AND OTHER THINGS 55 

boys. But in getting this second sort of training you 
will usually have to choose between several of many 
interests. If you elect to do one thing, you must usually 
omit the rest. A fellow may occasionally be president 
of his class and at the same time captain of the foot- 
ball team, but ordinarily one of these positions is quite 
sufficient to occupy his leisure moments. If you try too 
much, you will fail in all. If you get into the real life of 
the school and do something to direct its current, you will 
usually be better fitted to meet the unexpected in the 
more strenuous world into which you must go when you 
enter college or take up the practical work of life, than you 
would be if you simply did your school work and stayed in 
you own little shell. 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 

Most students in high school quite seriously believe 
that examinations have been devised by teachers merely 
to torture a group of defenseless young people. They 
see in examinations neither pleasure nor benefit, they 
look forward to their approach with premonition and 
pain, and give a relieved sigh when each series of exam- 
inations is safely past. 

"The teacher knows what a fellow will do before he 
takes an examination," the high school boy argues, ''so 
why can't he let it go at that and give a man a grade with- 
out working him to a shadow or scaring him to death in 
getting ready for an examination? " 

When I was in college we had a shrewd old instructor, 
lazy we thought him at times, whom we could never 
quite make out. His grades were always in the college 
office within a surprisingly short time after the examina- 
tion had ceased, so that there was a suspicion in the minds 
of a good many of us that he never read his examination 
papers at all, but dumped them into the waste paper 
basket and went home to enjoy his cigar. 

The trouble was that no one quite liked to take the 
risk to prove his suspicion. We threatened often to test 
out our theories by not studying for the quiz and by 
writing down any sort of bunk that came into our heads 

56 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 57 

when we got into the classroom, but these threats seldom 
got further than talk. Fred Waterman tried it once and 
flunked the course, whether because the old man read 
the paper and discovered Fred's trick, or because he had 
already scheduled Fred for defeat, we could never quite 
determine. As it was the majority of us went on bon- 
ing up for the examination and sweating through it, 
fearful that after all that the instructor might read the 
papers. I always meant to ask him after I got out of 
college whether he did or not, but I could never quite 
get up my nerve. I can see now that whether he read 
them or not made very little difference. He was a good 
judge of human nature. He knew us well enough so as sel- 
dom to do us any especial intellectual injustice, and he kept 
us guessing so that we had to make the review and the 
preparation that he wanted us to make. 

The boy is right who says that the teacher generally 
knows pretty well beforehand what his students are worth 
and what they will know on an examination. The teacher 
is just as sure, however, if he is any judge of human 
nature, that it is the getting ready for the examination 
and the actually taking of it that makes the boy sure of 
what he knows. If he knew that he did not have to take 
an examination the boy would seldom make any special 
mental effort. Our old high school trainer used to know 
pretty well what Jim Whalen would do in the race 
for which he was practicing, though Jim seldom made 
any remarkable showing before the time of actual contest. 



58 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

It was the thought of the race itself that put nerve into 
Jim. It was the contact with the other fellows and the 
stimulus of competition that urged him on and made 
him win. Jim would never have been much of a runner 
unless he had been put into a race, and no one knew the 
fact better than the trainer. It is the same way with a 
boy in examinations. 

A good many schools follow the practice of excusing 
from final examinations all students whose daily work 
averages above a certain grade. I know a good many 
high school boys who have never taken a final examina- 
tion and who would not know how to do so creditably. 
It is a perfectly easy matter, if he is alert while in the 
classroom and regular in his class attendance, for a 
boy to keep his daily grades up and still to have very 
little general grasp of the subject. I have just answered 
a letter from the father of one of our freshmen in college. 
The boy has been dropped at the end of his first year 
for poor scholarship, and the father finds it difficult 
to understand why. 

'' George was always a good student in the high school," 
he wrote. "He never had to take an examination, and 
I can not see why he had done so badly in college. '' 

In college George was required in his final examina- 
tion to present a general view of the whole subject-matter 
covered in his course; he found it necessary to syste- 
matize his knowledge and to present his facts in an orderly 
fashion, and he had had no previous practice in doing this 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 59 

sort of thing. It was quite easy to see why he had failed. 
He was working under a new system, and he had not 
adjusted himself to it. 

I have seldom seen a boy who was so smart in high school 
that he was excused from all his examinations who, 
without unusual effort, was able to do well in college. 
Such boys have a good many facts, possibly, in their 
possession, but when they want to use them, they don^t 
know where they are. They have been mislaid or so 
jumbled up with other things that it is impossible to 
disentangle them. Knowledge is of little use to any one 
unless it is available. I have all sorts of tools about 
the house, but if when I want to drive a nail I discover 
that the hammer is gone, and I am forced to use a flat 
iron, of what service to me is the hammer? A boy may 
have innumerable items of information somewhere 
about his brain, but if when he finds a use for facts 
it is impossible for him to organize or to recall them^ 
he is about as well off as if he did not have them 
at all. 

The best possible use of an examination is that it 
necessitates an organization of knowledge. A boy must 
get his facts into some sort of order if he is to do his best 
in a limited time. He must have what he has learned 
laid out before his mental vision so that he can put his 
hands on it readily if it is called for. I am often an on- 
looker at surgical operations. Nothing in this sort of 
experience interests me more than the preparations 



60 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

which are always made before the actual work of the 
operation begins. There is the movable tray standing 
ready by the operating table with its array of instru- 
ments all laid out in the most careful order. There are 
sponges, and needles, and all sorts of thread, and de- 
tractors, and forceps all in their places, and so arranged 
that whatever may be needed in the emergency that 
is likely to occur will be ready for use. It is some such 
preparation as this that a boy should make who is get- 
ting ready for an examination. He does not know what 
is going to be called for, but if he has his information 
in logical order he is ready for any call. 

An examination, or at least the preparation which 
any sensible boy will make in getting ready for an ex- 
amination, is an excellent training in judgment. The 
boy, as he goes over the material he has studied, must 
determine what is fundamental, what is important, and 
what without danger may be discarded. This requires 
thought, discrimination, and care. It is not so difficult 
to pick out each day the important facts of a lesson as 
it is at the close of a year's or a half year's study to select 
what one should carry with him from the mass of facts 
that has been considered. Knowing that he will be 
required to do this, a boy will study with a very different 
purpose than he would show if he were convinced that 
when a day's lesson is learned, he is through with it 
for all time. 

Examinations are meant to test a student's resource- 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 61 

fulness, his ability to meet a new situation, to assemble 
facts in a different way than he had been accustomed to 
do, and from them to draw new conclusions. 

"I never heard of some of the things the teacher asked 
us today," one of my neighbor boys announced following 
a jQnal examination. ''I'm sure a lot of the answers were 
not in the book." 

It always seems an injustice to a boy to be asked on an 
examination anything the answer to which can not easily 
be found by turning to the book. But really the best sort 
of question to ask is the one that requires the searching of 
a boy's brain rather than the book before he finds the 
proper answer. Nobody in real life ever finds a problem 
presented just as it is in the book, but, if he has learned 
to analyze and to organize his knowledge, the one in the 
book helps him to the solution of the one in real life. The 
lawyer seldom if ever finds the series of circumstances 
surrounding his first important case like any particular 
illustration he has studied; the surgeon taking out his 
first appendix can seldom put his finger on the disturbing 
organ at the point where the books say it ought to be. It 
is the thing that isn't in the book that we are always run- 
ning up against in practical life, and it is a very good ex- 
perience to get used to in the examinations taken in 
school. 

The greatest howl which is set up by the high school 
boys I know against examinations is caused by the so- 
called ''catch-questions" which are frequently introduced 



62 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

into examinations, and by the fact that examinations are 
frequently sprung upon an unsuspecting and unprepared 
class without announcement. 

"If he had only told us ahead of time that we were go- 
ing to have the quiz/' the boy protests, "it wouldn't have 
been so bad; but there we were absolutely unprepared. 
It wasn't fair." 

Here again there is something to be said on the other 
side. It is the purpose of an examination just as much to 
discover what a boy does not know as it is to find out the 
facts he is acquainted with. It is very helpful to a teacher 
at times as well as to his students to stumble upon the 
weak places in his teaching and in their knowledge. The 
"catch question" often tests the alert mind. All through 
life a boy will find that there is likely to be some one lying 
in wait to catch him by a trick or a technicality. He might 
as well get used early in life to recognizing these situations 
and meeting them. If only the expected happened, the 
world would be a very much easier place in which to live 
than it now is. I try to figure out each morning as I go 
to my office what form of student irregularity I shall dur- 
ing the day have to adjust, but I am never successful. No 
two days are alike; every problem which is presented has 
something in it unforeseen and unlike anything else which 
I have ever met. If we knew when we were going to die 
we should be upset considerably, no doubt, but I am not 
at all sure that we should meet the grim destroyer with 
any more composure than we shall when he comes upon us 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 63 

unannounced. It is the way most experiences of life come, 
so why not examinations? 

The hard examination is frequently objected to on the 
ground that it is not a fair test of a student's knowledge. 
It is a good thing for every boy, however, occasionally to 
give his brain a stiff work out. Our real physical and in- 
tellectual strength is tested not so much by what we 
can accomplish as we loaf along lazily through life, as 
by what we can do when we are pushed into a corner and 
forced to work or to think our hardest. The boys who 
came through the horrors of the Argonne or of Belleau 
Wood never suspected what they could stand until put 
to the test, and their changed point of view reveals the 
fact that they were strengthened by the test. One young 
boy I know got three meals out of eleven and was without 
sleep for three days, and I suppose he had an easy time as 
compared with what other boys suffered. Of course, if a 
boy lies down and refuses to do his best when he comes up 
against a hard mental test, the advantage to him of such an 
experience is nullified. 

An examination is a good game, if a boy will think of it 
so, a game which it is possible to learn to play skilfully. He 
must first of all keep his head if he is going to make a good 
score. He should go into the game in good condition and 
with good spirits. I know many fellows who get ready for 
an examination by studying far into the night or all night, 
trying in a few hours to cram into their brains all sorts of 
miscellaneous information. They get little sleep, and they 



64 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

go to theif examination stupid and irritable and in no con- 
dition to meet either the unexpected or the difficult. One 
of the best preparations for a stiff examination is a good 
night's sleep and a cold shower on rising. An intelligent 
review of the ground covered every one ought to take, but 
he should not try to do this at one sitting at the expense 
of his regular hours for sleep. This review is purely a 
matter of judgment to determine what is essential and 
what is not. It is the steady, regular, daily work that gets 
a fellow into condition for an examination more than the 
feverish cramming the night before the test comes. 

Next to a rested body, a calm mind and a reasonable 
self-confidence are most helpful in passing a good ex- 
amination, and these states of mind are much more fully 
within a boy's personal control than we are sometimes will- 
ing to admit. Worry and fear and lack of faith in our own 
ability to do a task well we largely induce in ourselves, or 
eliminate from our minds as the case may be. Self-con- 
trol is a good deal a matter of will, and the boy who is get- 
ting ready to take an examination can exercise it very much 
to his advantage. Whenever a player in any game allows 
himself to get "rattled," then his game goes to pieces. 

One should go at an examination in an orderly fashion. 
If you will watch a good whist player you will see that he 
arranges his cards carefully before he leads so that he can 
determine easily what the strength' of his hand is. He tac- 
kles first the thing that he is sure of. So a boy going into 
an examination should get a grasp of the whole situation 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 65 

before he begins his solution. He should read the entire 
examination paper before he begins to write, and should 
take stock of the requirements and of his assets. He 
should adjust his time to the length of the task before him. 
I have seen a good many boys fail an examination be- 
cause having met something difficult at the outset, they 
gave most of their available time to the solution of this 
problem and had no time left for the remainder of the 
examination which they might have found relatively 
simple. 

The best way from my experience to " hit an examination 
hard" is to answer first and as rapidly as possible all the 
questions the answers to which seem easy or obvious. This 
is quite possible, since students are seldom if ever required 
to write their answers in any definite order. By safely 
and quickly disposing of a reasonable share of the exam- 
ination, the boy gains confidence, he realizes that he is 
probably doing fairly well, and he can divide the remainder 
of his time between the questions that seem to him to re- 
quire more thought and care. His very satisfied state of 
mind will help clear his brain and steady his nerves for the 
doing of the task that is more difficult. 

During all this time he ought to be giving some at- 
tention to the order and form of his answers. A neatly 
written, orderly arranged examination paper, other things 
being equal, will draw a higher grade by several per cent 
than another one which may contain the same information 
badly put together. We are all unconsciously attracted 



66 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

by the shop whose windows display a tasteful and orderly 
arrangement of wares. Any jumble annoys us even if it 
be a jumble of things otherwise pleasing and attractive. 
Arrange your answers, therefore, so that they look well. 
If possible put them down so that the instructor can read- 
ily grasp what you are trying to say, and will not have to 
waste his time and his patience in digging out your reason- 
ing. Number or letter the subdivisions of your answers 
if necessary. Write legibly. I have thrown aside many an 
examination paper disgusted because it was almost impos- 
sible to determine the identity of the written words. Don't 
crowd your material; paper is of less value than your in- 
structor's eyesight or peace of mind. The very fact that 
you seem trying to make what you say clear and easy 
of comprehension predisposes the instructor in your 
favor. 

It sometimes pays to guess, if one is not certain of his 
facts. Of course, it is a weak player who is always un- 
certain, and a weak boy who hasn't some things definitely 
in mind. But on occasion it is best to take a chance, and 
if you are wrong to take the consequences. Even the best 
of us has to bluff once in a while, and just so one doesn't 
get the reputation for regularly doing it, no harm is likely 
to be done. It is better to be struck out trying to hit the 
ball than it is to be sent back to the bench never having 
swung the bat. 

I have spoken of examinations as a game. I should like 
to have every boy feel that it is an honest game, an honor- 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 67 

able gentleman's game, which he must play squarely, de- 
pending upon his own skill and his own knowledge to 
carry him through. 

"But I had to pass," a boy said to me once in justifica- 
tion of the fact that he had been caught cribbing. 

He was entirely mistaken. Nobody has to pass, and no- 
body should pass unless he does so honestly. The boy 
who gains his grades through cribbing, is little better than 
a common thief. There are a thousand forms and methods 
of getting help illegitimately in an examination, from 
cribbing from your neighbor's paper to bringing books and 
elaborately disguised "ponies" to class, but no one who 
cares for honesty and for his reputation will have anything 
to do with any of these. In truth they seldom help a great 
deal. I am convinced that it could be shown, if the proper 
investigation were made, that the cribber loses on the 
whole more than he^ gains not only in self-reliance and 
strength of character but in the accuracy of the informa- 
tion which he puts down, which would be more de- 
pendable if he relied upon his own brains. There is the 
greatest satisfaction always in feeling after an examination 
that one has done a good piece of work. There is the great- 
est satisfaction in being able to feel that whatever the re- 
sult of the test you have done your best and that you have 
played a clean square game. I always feel proud of the 
boy who can say after he has taken a quiz, 

"Well, whatever my grade is, what I handed in was 
entirely my own." Like Paul he can say, "I have fought 



68 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the 
faith." 

One of the stock arguments against examinations is that 
they are not fair. 

"I could have answered ahnost anything else in the 
book," the boy who has just been through an examina- 
tion protests. ''He asked me just the things I didn't 
know." 

This is, of course, virtually admitting that what the 
teacher had considered fundamental, the boy had thought 
of as trivial, and tends to prove that his mind had not been 
especially alert during the recitation periods. It is not 
possible that the teacher, in making a comprehensive set 
of examination questions, should have selected only those 
details with which the student was not familiar unless the 
student had shown little attention to what had been going 
on in the class recitation. Even a poor teacher makes 
pretty clear during the class work some of the points at 
least which he considers important. 

I have never doubted that there are times when an ex- 
amination strikes even a good student pretty hard, just as 
in playing a game one is sure at times to draw a poor hand 
or to have a bad run of luck. But just as surely he will 
stumble upon the easy test when everything seems to be 
coming his way. Sometimes, when he has apparently 
made little preparation, the quiz seems as easy as taking 
candy away from a baby. In such a case, however, I have 
yet to hear the first claim that examinations do not fairly 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 69 

measure a boy's ability. It is the average, and not the 
single test that truthfully measures a student's accom- 
plishments. 

I always like to hear a group of high school boys dis- 
cussing grades. From such discussions, of which I have 
heard not a few, I would draw the conclusion that from the 
high school boy's point of view at least, grades do not indi- 
cate fairly a boy's accomplishment in any subject. Grades 
are in no sense an index of a student's real ability and do 
not show what he has "got out of a subject." They do 
not suggest anything of what he is likely to accomplish 
after he is through with school and college and has gone 
into the practical work of life. If a mistake has ever been 
made in a boy's grade, and such mistakes the boy admits 
are legion, it has always been that he has been marked 
lower than he deserved. I have never yet heard a boy com- 
plain that his teacher had given him a grade higher than he 
was entitled to. The assigning of grades, he is convinced, 
is very much a lottery. The teacher very likely writes the 
names of his students on slips of paper and puts them in 
one hat, and a series of grades on other slips and puts these 
in another hat, pulls out a name and then a grade and thus 
settles each boy's fate. It is a pretty generally accepted 
doctrine that nothing gives a teacher so much or so ex- 
quisite joy as to be able to flunk a boy. The more he 
flunks the more pleasure he gets out of his work. 

To begin with, grades are symbols only; they should 
never be taken quite literally. They are meant merely to 



70 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

indicate the difference between poor and excellent work. 
The raising or the lowering of the passing grade in any 
school would seldom if ever influence the number who 
would be passed or failed. For instance, in the school 
which I attended seventy-five was the passing grade. At a 
similar institution which a boy friend attended in another 
country, thirty was the passing grade, and yet no larger a 
percentage of the students were passed in his school than 
in mine. The only difference was that in the school 
with the lower passing grade it was possible to show 
a greater variety of ability, and the student in his institu- 
tion who was given the very high grade was entitled to 
somewhat more distinction than was the man who got 
the high grade in my institution. Students argue often 
that because the passing grade in a school is high the 
standard of excellence in that school is necessarily higher 
than in a school where the passing grade is lower. There 
is little or nothing to such an argument. 

To a very large degree grades are an index of the charac- 
ter of the work that a student is doing. A single grade 
either high or low can not fairly determine an individual 
case, for a single grade may be the result of luck, good or 
bad, or, perhaps, it is better to say of chance; but a boy's 
average grade may in general fairly be taken to represent 
either his ability or his industry. If his grades are uni- 
formly high he is either a quick, clever thinker or a hard 
worker; if they are regularly low, he is either dull or 
lazy. 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 71 

"Now, father," I heard Frank explaining to his parent 
when questioned as to the cause of a particularly modest 
showing in grades at the end of a half year, "I got 
a lot out of those courses which doesn't show in my 
grades." 

He was really dodging the issue as was Adam when 
caught with the apple or Cain when his brother was 
missing. 

If a boy has actually secured any logical or definite in- 
formation from a course the chances are overwhelmingly 
in favor of his being able to make clear to the teacher that 
this is the case. The boy who writes a poor examination is 
in the same class as the teacher who presents his subject 
badly — ^ten chances to one the matter is muddled in his 
own brain. If you will pin such a person down to actual 
"brass tacks, '^ you will find that his knowledge is not 
clear-cut and definite. 

It is not at all difficult to find illustrations of the high 
school and college student whose scholastic record has been 
commonplace or poor who later in life has made a distinct 
if not a brilliant business or professional success. Neither 
is it impossible to find illustrations of the high school and 
college valedictorian whose place in middle life is common- 
place and whose success was never attained. The fact, 
however, that such cases stand out so clearly, that they 
makie such a vivid impression upon our minds, only tends 
to prove that they are rather rare. The dullard in school 
is not hopeless; he simply has far less chance to make good 



72 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

than has the student who has given a good account of him- 
self. The bright student in school and college does not 
have a monopoly on success; he simply has considerably 
more than an even chance with the other fellows to make 
good. 

I have followed pretty carefully the record of fellows 
whom I knew in school and college twenty-five or thirty 
years ago. There are a few who did well scholastically 
who have done little in the positions which they have 
since held. In most cases, however, it is not difficult 
to understand why; they had alert minds without self- 
rehance or initiative. There are some, also, whose scho- 
lastic record was little to their credit, who are now leaders 
in the business or the profession which they have taken up. 
Here, too, the explanation is not hard to find. They had 
conceit and self-reliance; they were good judges of human 
nature, and their independence and personal magnetism 
outweighed their lack of ability to think and reason logi- 
cally. On the whole, however, I can say that in more than 
ninety per cent of the cases of the fellows I have known 
in school and college, the success of these men could be 
very accurately measured by the grades which they re- 
ceived while they were in the high school or college. It is 
as sensible to claim that character is worthless, because it 
is possible to show that a crook occasionally gets by with 
his crookedness, as it is to claim that grades neither indi- 
cate a boy's success in school nor his probable progress 
later in life. The facts prove otherwise. 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 73 

*'I^m not working for grades," I hear boys say repeat- 
edly. "I don't believe grades show much about a fellow's 
work." 

Fathers, too, echo the same sentiments, but never so 
far as I can now recall, when their sons were getting any- 
thing creditable in the way of grades. It was the defense 
of their son's commonplace work which they were throw- 
ing up. It was another case of the fox who, when he saw 
that he could not reach the grapes, consoled himself by 
declaring them sour. It would be quite as sensible and 
convincing an argument, it seems to me, for a runner to 
say, ''I don't care what time I make in the race; it doesn't 
seem to me that time means anything when a fellow's in 
a race. Just so one gets around the track a certain num- 
ber of times is all that is necessary;" or for a base ball 
player to declare, ''I don't count much on the base hits 
or the runs a man makes; I went to bat just as many times 
as any one did." 

High grades are an indication of accomplishment; they 
show, usually, correct thinking, logical arrangement, and 
a grasp of fundamentals. Sometimes, it is true, they are 
the result of dishonest methods, or of a well-trained mem- 
ory, but such cases are the exception and not the rule. The 
low grade, in general, suggests the commonplace student 
who is either slow in his thinking processes or unwilling 
to work. No one should be satisfied to do poorly. Every 
business man, every professional man, every boy in high 
school ought to be ambitious to excel in his special line of 



74 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

endeavor. It is not enough just to come out even at the 
end of the year or just to get by at the examination. One 
should have pride enough to be eager to be as good as the 
best. 

I have been a teacher for a good many years and I know 
that the great body of teachers want their students to do 
well, and are as proud as the boys themselves when their 
students do attain scholastic distinction. The teacher 
who takes delight in seeing his students fail can occasion- 
ally be found, but only rarely, I am sure. 

As I was walking home to lunch during examination time 
I came upon one of our instructors. He was dragging him- 
self along very slowly and looking the picture of gloom. 
He is at best not a hilarious person, and he has the reputa- 
tion of being a rather hard taskmaster in his classes and 
one who takes a certain pleasure in seeing the downfall of 
the unambitious student. 

"What^s on your mind, Fred?" I asked. 

''I haven't slept well the last few nights," he admitted. 
"A lot of my boys haven't done well on the examinations, 
and I can't see why. I hate to flunk them. The fact is 
I've read some of the papers three or four times trying to 
find enough in them to pass the fellows. I'm late now in 
handing in my grades, and I'm just trying to determine 
what I ought to do." 

I laughed. I am sure not one of his students would have 
believed me if I had told them that Professor Frederick 
Brown, the cold-blooded, hard-hearted instructor who 



EXAMINATIONS AND GRADES 75 

took such delight in flunking every one possible, was ly- 
ing awake of nights trying to devise some honest way to 
pass the boys; but that is what really happens more often 
than we imagine. Any good teacher wants his students to 
do well; any ambitious boy wants to get good grades. 



THE LEISURE HOUR 

Every boy has leisure — ^much more, often, than he thinks. 
There are the hours during the day when no tasks are set, 
the weeks of the summer vacation when there is frequently 
nothing definite regularly to occupy his time, and there 
are the long winter evenings when even study will not suf- 
fice to take up all his available time. More often than 
otherwise he is left to himself during these hours and days 
of leisure, and what he does to occupy the time affects 
materially both his present and future happiness and his 
character. 

One of our most respected Southern colleges has, among 
other customs, an unwritten tradition that the young fel- 
low just out of high school and entering college should not 
be found loafing around the ''Corner," a well-known place 
with its own particular attractions and allurements as well 
as its own particular dangers. The reason for this restric- 
tion, if a reason were necessary, is, no doubt, that it is not 
thought good for a young boy to begin his college career 
by cultivating the habit of loafing on street corners and 
picking up the uncertain acquaintances wont to con- 
gregate in such places; it is even worse for a high school 
boy so to occupy his time. 

If any one in our town wanted to find Bert, if he were 
not in school or at home, he was as certain to be located 

76 



THE LEISURE HOUR 77 

at the pool hall as his father on Sunday morning was sure to 
be found at church. Bert knew no other recreation; it was 
his particular indoor sport, and though he developed no 
skill in pool to speak of, he was quite content to spend his 
money and waste his time in shooting the balls into a pocket. 
He has no other recreation today. He is not unique in any 
way. If, out of his working hours, you are looking for any 
boy with whom you are acquainted there is quite likely to 
be some particular corner where he leans against the wall, 
some definite place which draws him, some sport which 
makes for him a regular and an irresistible appeal, a man- 
dolin, or a golf club, or a billiard cue that drops readily into 
his hand. As I go down town every day after my work 
is done, I can usually run in to the same old loafers talking 
politics or whittling the store boxes that cumber the side- 
walk, the same young boys doing nothing in the same 
places or kidding the girls that pass by on the street. 

A certain amount of leisure is necessary for everyone, 
man or boy. All work and no play not only makes Jack a 
dull boy, but it retards his development, it sours his disposi- 
tion, and it very likely turns him into a pretty irritable and 
unpleasant companion. No one can work all the time with- 
out reducing his efficiency, and without wearing out his 
nervous system. A little vacation, even if it is only an 
hour or two in the woods or a half day fishing at the river, 
sends one back to his work rested and with more vim and 
more interest and enthusiasm. I have no doubt that a 
good part of the purpose of the creator when he inaugur- 



78 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

ated the custom of working six days and resting the seventh 
was to forestall some fool man who would probably start 
the custom of working all the time and so eliminate vaca- 
tions and reduce the general efficiency of mankind. As a 
class, we Americans have too few leisure hours. 

Of course growing boys need more leisure time than do 
other people. They are only beginning to develop con- 
centration, their bodies tire, and they grow weary very 
soon of doing one thing, and so need a change; their high- 
strung nervous systems need relaxation, and they are 
helped in the development of self-reliance by being left for 
a considerable time to do as they please. One has only to 
see the pinched, white, tired faces of the children who are 
ground down by long hours of toil to realize how it dwarfs 
and stunts and discourages a child to have no recreation, to 
have no time in which he may do as he pleases. The boy 
with no leisure is robbed of his youth; and youth at best 
is all too short. 

It is really astonishing, however, if one has never be- 
fore done so, to discover just how many hotirs in a day or 
a week or a month one has at his own disposal — in fact 
just how much time one wastes, or idles away, or uses for 
one's own pleasure or recreation; and boys have far more 
than other and older people. A boy came to see me not 
long ago who was complaining because he had so much 
work to do and so little time in which to do it, so much 
drudgery and so little leisure in which to enjoy himself. 
His was the common complaint of young boys. 



THE LEISURE HOUR 79 

"I haven't a minute," was his assertion. 

"Won't you keep a record for the next week," I asked 
him, "of exactly how you spend the twenty-four hours of 
the day, and bring it back to me?" 

I gave him directions as to how the time should be di- 
vided : so much for meals, so much for sleeping, so much for 
school work and study, and so on, and required him to ac- 
count specifically for the entire twenty-four hours of the 
day. 

"I guess I'm not working as much as I thought," he 
said when, at the end of the specified time, he came back 
again. "I'm a good deal more of a loafer than I should 
have been willing to admit." 

His record showed, as yours will quite likely if you will 
take the trouble to investigate, that nearly one-third of the 
twenty-four hours of each working day, and much more 
than that on Saturdays and Sundays was taken up 
either with doing very trifling things or in actually doing 
nothing. He had considerable leisure, but he was wasting 
it. If the boy who thinks he has little or no leisure time 
will make a similar experiment, he may have his eyes 
opened. The undeniable fact is that most of us waste our 
leisure; we get out of it neither pleasure nor profit. 

There are few things which more accurately reveal 
your character than the use that you make of your leisure 
time or would make of it if you could follow your own de- 
sires. If for the next twenty-four hours you could do as 
you please, go where you want to, and be asked no ques- 



80 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

tions, what would you do? Some boys would go fishing, 
some would read a book or build something. I know boys 
who would stay in bed sleeping most of the time and others 
who would not go to bed at all; some would play a game 
or take a trip, and some would do things about which they 
would not care to speak. It might be very interesting for 
every boy to think the question out for himself and to 
answer it. 

Many people, boys and men, are quite at a loss to know 
what to do with leisure time and quite upset if unexpect- 
edly they are confronted with an hour or two of leisure 
and are separated from their ordinary entertainment. 
Many are like the old citizen in an isolated New England 
village, who being asked what he did in the winter when 
the summer tourists with whom he employed his time had 
gone, replied, 
V " Wal, mostly I set and think; and sometimes I jest set." 

Those who have not trained themselves to think, who 
have no resourcefulness when left to their own devices, 
are sometimes forced merely to "set,'' and to find little 
pleasure in leisure time and no incentive to thought. 

Coming into Atlanta one Sunday morning not long ago, 
I had as a seatmate an intelligent looking man of middle 
age who was bemoaning the fact that he was to have an 
unoccupied day in a city with which he was not familiar. 
Only two possible solutions of the problem as how best to 
spend a tiresome day suggested themselves to him — the 
Sunday newspaper and sleep. Church, music, books, the 



THE LEISURE HOUR 81 

woods, a quiet walk — none of these made any appeal to 
him. He only yawned, bored at the mere thought that 
here was a whole day at his disposal and positively nothing 
to do. It was really sad to realize that here was a man 
whose life was more than half gone and who, when left 
to himself, was helpless to enjoy it. Some time I intend 
to write an article on how to spend one's time enjoyably 
in railroad stations. 

One of the most unhappy men I know has an attrac- 
tive home, a comfortable income, and much leisure. He 
is not harassed by hard toil or the fear of poverty; but he 
does not know how to spend his leisure. He has not cul- 
tivated any special friendships with people, or interest in 
them, he does not find enjoyment in reading, he takes no 
pleasure in the beautiful birds, and flowers, and trees with 
which he is surrounded. He plays no games, finds no 
comfort in exercise, and is at his wits end when he has 
read the Breeders^ Gazette and the village newspaper. 
Like the New England farmer the most that he does is 
just to ''set." A boy should cultivate as many interests 
as possible, should find a hundred interesting and profitable 
ways to employ his leisure time. In doing so he will be 
happier and wiser now, and more useful and happy later 
in life. 

A boy's greatest danger and his greatest temptation 
comes not while he is at work, not while he is busy with 
something that keeps his brain and his hands employed 
but when he is free to do as he pleases, when his time ia 



82 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

his own and when he does not know quite what to do with 
it, when he is out from under any direction but his own 
personal desires. It is only another illustration of Satan 
finding work for idle hands to do. Practically every bad 
habit that a boy develops, every moral misstep that he 
makes, may be traced to the misuse of leisure time. Any 
boy who has learned to smoke or to swear or to drink or to 
gamble or to be dishonest or to associate with vulgar or 
lewd women will admit, if he will recall his first offense, 
that in nine cases out of ten, he slipped at some vacation 
time, or at some time when he was free from the regular 
obligations of his daily work and with other fellows was 
left to his own devices. It is a story generally of '^nothing 
to do" and "out for a time.'' 

That was Tom Brown's experience as told in the story 
with which every high school boy is familiar. He was 
saved, fortunately, from the great temptation, but it was 
more through good luck than good management. If 
Arthur Donnithorne had had more to do, if his leisure 
time had been spent in something besides idleness and the 
pursuit of selfish pleasure, the tragedy of Hetty Sorrel 
in Adam Bede might very easily have been averted. 

There is a good reason for this condition of affairs. A 
boy relaxes at vacation time, he lets down, he is somewhat 
off his guard, and he therefore is more open to suggestion. 
It is at week ends, and Christmas time, and summer vaca- 
tions, it is on the night when he is allowed to stay out after 
his regular bed time that the temptation comes. He wants 



THE LEISURE HOUR 83 

to be a "good fellow," he can not bear to be thought a 
quitter; when something a little daring or risque is pro- 
posed, he often lacks the courage to stand out against it, 
and the inevitable happens. Disease and drunkenness 
and irregularities of all sorts are far more imminent at 
vacations than at any other time. The most dangerous 
times are when he is excited by victory or depressed by 
defeat or when he has so much leisure on his hands that 
he grows bored with it and must break loose into the ir- 
regular in order to relieve his pent-up feelings. I believe 
in athletics, but it must be confessed that the athletic con- 
test is responsible for a good many boyish derelictions, 
because the excitement of victory or the despondency of 
defeat throws the boy out of himself for the time being 
and makes him an easy victim to the temptations which 
are always lying in wait. 

It is nearly always an unfortunate thing for a boy to 
have no regular duties or responsibilities aside from his 
school work. The most unhappy and the most discon- 
tented boys I know, the laziest and the most dissipated, 
are those whose time before and after school is at their 
own disposal. They are likely to develop habits of ex- 
travagance, to become spendthrifts and loafers, and the 
loafer is generally ready for any sort of proposition that 
may come up that will give him a new sensation or a 
novel experience, immoral or otherwise. Even if the boy 
with unlimited leisure develops the habit of reading, which 
in itself is a very creditable one, his tendency will be to be- 



84 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

come something of a recluse, to shut himself in, and to 
grow pale and round shouldered and out of touch with 
other fellows of his age. Every growing boy is better off 
for having some regular work to do, something physical, 
if possible, that will harden his muscles and develop his 
strength and teach him to assume responsibility. Boys 
usually have to learn to like work as they learn to like 
olives, by keeping at it until their taste is developed. I 
know too many boys who would feel humiliated to be 
caught washing the car, or mowing the lawn, or taking 
care of the furnace, but any boy, no matter what the fi- 
nancial standing of his father may be, is made stronger and 
more manly and more dependable and happier, if he has 
a steady regular job to take up a part of his leisure time, 
and to teach him the dignity of labor and the value of 
money. I have never known anyone, boy or man, who 
lost caste by working, or who on the other hand was not 
helped by doing so. 

In conjunction with too much leisure or leisure that is 
largely without occupation, too much spending money is 
a bad thing for a boy. When a boy has so much money 
at his disposal that he needs to give little thought to his 
expenditures, he is likely to grow selfish, to fall into ex- 
travagances, if not to drift into worse things. It is an un- 
comfortable situation for a boy to have too little money 
or less than the fellows with whom he regularly associates; 
it is a dangerous one for him to have so much that he can 
daily gratify his appetites or satisfy his desires for pleas- 



THE LEISURE HOUR 85 

ure. If he does not learn while he is young to make some 
sort of sacrifice and to deny himself, he will not find it 
easy later in life. 

Granted that there is danger to the young boy who has 
a considerable amount of leisure, there is, also, to the one 
who will use it wisely, a great opportunity. Most men who 
have come up from poverty and ignorance to positions of 
financial responsibility and intellectual attainment have 
done so through the regular and wise utilization of their 
leisure time. One of the best French scholars I know got 
all his preliminary knowledge during his leisure hours in 
the army when he was only a young boy. The biographies 
of well-known men furnish innumerable illustrations of 
boys who, with little encouragement and less opportunity, 
by using their leisure hours wisely made themselves ready 
for positions which would not otherwise have been open 
to them. 

There are various ways in which the high school boy 
may utilize his leisure time. He may use it, as too many 
boys do, in the pursuit of so-called pleasures that are ac- 
tually injurious to his health and to his character. It is 
not necessary to specify all of the things which are a real 
injury to a young fellow; one may be pretty well assured, 
however, that when the high school boy is out every night 
of the week until long after he should be in bed, what- 
ever he may be doing, he is not attending Sunday school. 
When boys are found nightly hanging about street comers 
or talking to careless silly girls, they are not picking up 



\ 



86 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

information that will be of any particular service to them 
or developing habits that will better fit them for citizen- 
ship. Few boys develop vicious or immoral habits with 
the idea of continuing them. It is the fling of the moment, 
they say, and they promise themselves and their friends, 
often, that their derelictions are to be short lived. Ex- 
perience shows, however, that the high school boy who 
even for a brief period falls into questionable habits finds 
it no easy matter to separate himself from them. Ex- 
periences of all sorts, at his age, sink deep into his con- 
sciousness and are hard to eradicate — psychologists tell 
us that such impressions are eradicated with far more 
difficulty than are those which come later in life. For- 
tunately, the larger percentage of boys are saved from 
such experiences. 

Most of the young boys whom I know do not spend 
their time viciously but foolishly. They are not during 
their leisure developing useful knowledge or physical 
strength, or cultivating habits or tasks that yield them 
much present gratification or insure future happiness or 
usefulness, most of their activities being only momentary 
gratification. 

"What did you do yesterday, before and after school?^' 
I asked Frank a few days ago. Frank is aged seven- 
teen and is making a feeble attempt to get through the 
junior year in high school. His father is a well-to-do 
citizen who has established himself in his present busi- 
ness by long and consistent hard work. He usually looks 



THE LEISURE HOUR 87 

after his own furnace and occasionally mows his own 
lawn. I have even caught him washing his car or putting 
up the screens to his house. Frank has unlimited leisure 
and doesn't know a lawn mower from a cream separator. 
He knows how to drive a car but is ignorant of even 
the crudest methods of washing it. He is always well 
dressed and spends money freely. He is, in fact, a very 
pleasant and a very popular boy. He spends his leisure 
time as most boys in his class do. 

"I slept so late in the morning," was his reply, "that 
by missing my breakfast I barely had time to get to 
school for my first recitation. At lunch time Paul and 
I went down to Harris' and had an egg malted milk. 
After our last recitation for the day we had another 
drink and then went to the movies. We fooled round 
until dinner time and took a ride in the car until bed 
time. In fact, I guess it was a little after bed time, for 
as nearly as I remember it was about one a. m. when I 
rolled in." 

And this is not unusual; it is his regular program. He 
seldom if ever studies; he has no interest in athletics; 
he does not look into a newspaper; he never reads a book. 
The car and sentimental girls and ice cream parlors 
and moving picture shows take up practically all of his 
leisure time which is not given over to lying in bed, or 
strumming a ukelele. It is a gay and carefree life he lives! 

There is little harm, possibly, in racing a motor car 
about town, but it is, in the long run, an expensive 



88 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

pastime if it is not sometimes a dangerous one. It is 
the young boy, usually, who exceeds the speed limit. 
I can see little real profit or permanent good in most 
of the vaudeville or moving picture shows. The plays 
which appear regularly on the screen are frequently 
full of questionable suggestions if they are not actually 
vulgar, and at best they are unlikely often to aid in 
the development of either good taste or good morals; 
and yet there are many young boys in almost every town 
who would be unhappy and discontented if they did not 
attend at least one show a day, and I know many who 
during the summer time go twice a day. There are far 
better ways of spending leisure time, and ways which 
will bring more satisfactory returns both to the young boy 
and to the man that he will later become. 

I was visiting not long ago in a part of the United 
States with whose trees and birds and flowers I had 
previously not been familiar. These things were to 
me both curious and interesting, and I asked a good 
many direct questions about them. Only one of the 
six or eight boys with whom I was walking about 
could give me any satisfactory information as to the 
names of the trees or the birds or the flowers with which 
I was not familiar though they were all intelligent in 
general matters, were graduates of good high schools, 
and had lived in the community all their lives. 

Some of them ventured a guess, but in every case, 
as I remember, they guessed incorrectly. They were 



THE LEISURE HOUR 89 

a little annoyed finally at their apparent ignorance, 
and one of them determined to show me that he was 
not wholly unfamiliar with the flora of his region. As 
we were passing through a park, he pointed out a bed 
of flowers saying, "Well, I know what those flowers 
are, anyway: they^re phlox. '^ He was really mistaken, 
though I did not have the courage to tell him so, for they 
were petunias. 

Now, a boy who is fifteen years of age and who has 
spent any considerable time out of doors ought to have 
had interest and curiosity enough to learn the names 
of the plants which he has seen growing about him every 
day, he ought to be as familiar with conmion trees and 
shrubs as he is with the people whom he meets daily 
on the street. If he had such knowledge, it would en- 
liven every quiet walk which he might take, it would 
give interest to every journey and help to dispel lone- 
someness and gloom; for every bird in the hedges, every 
vine and shrub and flower which he would see from the 
car window, would seem like meeting an old friend on 
the streets of a strange city. The reasons why boys 
find so little pleasure in long walks into the country 
or in quiet strolls in the woods when there is no girl 
along, is because they meet little or nothing that is inter- 
esting or familiar; they lack the information and the 
training necessary to bring them pleasure, though it is 
information which might very easily be obtained. 

There is no method of occupying one's leisure time 



90 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

that will bring more present and permanent pleasure 
to a boy than reading. Few boys read the newspapers? 
and those who do generally confine themselves to the 
cartoons and the sporting page. I shall have more in 
in detail to say about this subject in another article, 
so that I shall simply content myself with saying here, 
that part, at least, of a boy's leisure every day should 
be devoted to general reading that will stimulate his 
imagination, keep him informed on what is going on in 
the world to-day and what was going on centuries ago. 

The boy or the man who reads is always safer and 
happier and has a great advantage over his companion 
who does not do so. He has a possibility of general in- 
telligence not open to other boys. 

Men who have not learned to take regular exercise 
while they are boys are little likely to do so later in life, 
and the adult man who engages in no regular exercise 
or who does not play with some sort of skill an athletic 
out-of-door game will grow old and ineffective earlier 
in life than would otherwise be the case, will grow wide 
of girth or slow on his feet even if he does not actually 
break down. There is nothing like exercise for keeping 
one young and active. The youngest old man that I 
know, in some ways a boy still at eighty, has played 
every day for many years, and is still playing, a vigorous 
athletic game. 

Few people will keep up an interest in any athletic 
game in which they do not show some skill. Everybody 



THE LEISURE HOUR 91 

who is normal likes to beat rather than to be beaten, 
and skill in almost any game which requires physical 
alertness, unless it be golf, is seldom developed unless 
one begins in youth. Further than this, if one waits 
until he is out of high school or college before he takes 
up any athletic recreation he is likely to argue and to 
prove the point to himself, that he has not time for such 
foolishness; his business is too exacting, his responsibil- 
ities are too great, things generally would go to the bow- 
wows if he took the time to learn what his better judgment 
tells him would be the best thing in the world for him. 
The high school boy has no such excuse. He has plenty 
of time, he would be immeasurably beneJSted by such 
exercise both now and later in life, and the development 
of skill is for him so much more possible than for 
an older man. There are few boys, no matter how thin 
or fat, heavy or light, tall or short, who could not by 
persistence develop skill beyond the commonplace in 
some sort of healthy athletic activity, and who would 
not from such development derive the greatest pleasure 
and profit from the mere joy of contest; from physical 
strength developed, from friendships formed, from self- 
rehance gained through the defeat of some opponent. 
Leisure time spent in the development of a strong healthy 
body will pay as high an interest on the time invested 
as anything which a high school boy can engage in. It 
will develop in him moral stamina and control; it will 
often bring him the respect and the admiration of his fel- 



92 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

lows and a physical reserve which will be to him a god- 
send when he needs to call upon it in the emergencies 
which come sooner or later to all men. 

I have a neighbor, a man of education and of ordinary 
intelligence, who is constantly in mechanical difficulties. 
If a faucet leaks, he is quite at sea as to what ought to 
be done to adjust it; if his car gets out of order, he is 
as much at a loss to know how to fix it as is his ten-year- 
old son — ^more at a loss, perhaps, for the boy is learning 
to use his hands; he can not drive a nail or stoke a furnace, 
or make anything run that is out of order. If anything 
mechanical gets out of fix, he stands around as helpless 
as an infant. He did not when a boy learn to use his hands 
or to cultivate any mechanical skill. 

Every boy of high school age should learn to make 
things and should develop curiosity enough to want 
to know how mechanical things are put together and how 
they run. Tools should not have an awkward feeling 
in his hands; he should be able to bore a straight hole, 
to put in a screw correctly, to saw a board evenly, and 
so to adjust a lawn mower that it will give the lawn a 
smooth, even hair cut. If he has access to a motor 
car he ought to figure out its mechanism intelligently 
enough to understand how to keep it in order and what 
to do for it when it refuses to work properly. I know 
boys who have had cars for years who are as confused 
and helpless when they look under the hood as they 
would be if they were asked to translate a language with 



THE LEISURE HOUR 93 

which they were unfamiliar; they have not used their 
leisure time to advantage; and yet these are the things 
which any intelligent boy could learn, and the knowledge 
of which would be a great asset to him both in pleasure 
and in usefulness. 

There is the opportunity, also, which every boy has 
during his leisure time for the cultivation of friendships, 
for the understanding of other boys, for the development 
of relationships which will continue throughout his whole 
life. I do not undervalue the good effects which come from 
a boy's association with girls; in another place I shall 
speak of these somewhat more at length. I believe, how- 
ever, that the value of a boy's healthy association with 
other boys is much greater to him during his high school 
days than any other association he may have.- Time 
spent in acquiring friends and in learning to know and to 
understand them is usually well spent. As I go back now 
over a period of forty years I find no greater satisfaction 
than in the recollection that I came to know a few boys 
well, that our friendships deepened as time went on, and 
if I could choose today whom of all of my friends from 
whom I am now separated by time and distance I should 
most like to see, and with whom I should soonest drop 
into the old time relationship, it would be a boy whom I 
knew first in district school, with whom I later prepared 
for college, and who was for two years in college my closest 
friend. I see him now only at rare intervals, for we are 
separated by a thousand miles or more, but I am sure that 



94 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

the leisure time in childhood and youth and early man- 
hood I spent with him was well spent and brought me hap- 
piness then and leaves me a pleasant memory today. The 
experience I had so long ago, any other boy can have if 
he gives himself to it. 

For most of us, boys or men, there are set tasks which 
occupy definite portions of time. During these periods 
we are largely the creatures of routine; lessons or routine 
duties, or business of one sort or another come to us reg- 
ularly throughout the day, and we have little or no choice 
but to do them and to ask no questions. We may each of 
us exercise a certain amount of discretion or individuality 
in the doing of this work, but in the main it is put before 
us without our asking, and it is done today in much the 
same way as it was yesterday. It is only when it comes to 
our leisure time that the choice of how it may be em- 
ployed is ours. We are never so much our real selves as 
during our leisure hours. Eliminating the leisure time 
which falls to every high school boy during the five working 
days of the week, there is always Saturday and Sunday 
in which he is pretty free to follow his own tactics. He 
can spend his time in things that are trifling or useless or 
even harmful. He can sleep, or, what is equally bad if 
not worse, he can sit around doing absolutely nothing but 
chatter and gossip and loaf. But life is too short even to 
waste it in youth; there are too many pleasant and profit- 
able things to do, and it is some of these that in these para- 
graphs I have attempted to suggest. Every boy must 



THE LEISURE HOUR 95 

have pleasure, but it should be healthful and stimulating; 
it should send him back to the regular work which is his 
to do, stronger, healthier, cleaner, with greater energy and 
greater ambition. If from your leisure hours you come 
to your regular work listless and yawning and without 
ambition or pleasure at the thought of work, if your pleas- 
ure has left you tired and irritable, if your recreation, 
however you spend it, has not in some way made you a 
better boy and better prepared you for your work, then it 
has not been spent as it should have been. You should 
work it out some other way. 



BOOKS AND READING 

Printing, which is not such an ancient art after all, 
helped very much to make books more plentiful. Before 
printing was invented the man outside of the Church who 
owned a book or who could get at one easily was almost as 
rare as the man who kept a pet elephant. There were not 
many books, and those there were, were hard to get at and 
had few readers. The ability to read was not so common as 
today, for schools were not run at public expense, and 
education was not general and was not compulsory. Books 
were laboriously lettered by hand and bound with great 
care. It took a long time to make a book. Sometimes they 
were chained to the table upon which they lay, so that 
people might have an opportunity to read them and yet 
not be able to carry them away. The reading habit was, 
therefore, not a common one. 

Even after printing was introduced, books did not at 
once become plentiful. For generations, the daily news- 
paper was almost unthought of. When it was established, 
it had little circulation excepting in cities, and neither 
newspapers nor books were generally to be found in the 
houses of the common people. They could not afford 
them, and they did not realize either the pleasure or the 
benefits of reading. 

Respect for books, even within the experience of our 

96 



BOOKS AND READING 97 

grandparents, was much greater than it now is. It was 
a signal honor to be given a book. When as a boy of ten 
Jim Justice, our neighbor boy, won a copy of Robinson 
Crusoe as a prize for regular attendance at school, he was 
looked upon almost with as much respect as today 
is accorded the returning soldier who has won the Dis- 
tinguished Service Medal. It is not so in these times. 
Books are too common; they are too easily obtained and 
too generally at our disposal. 

I ran across grandmother's geography this morning. 
The Village Elementary Geography, standing primly 
beside Bob's First Year Latin Lessons, on our book- 
shelves. Bob is my nephew who is in high school. Grand- 
mother's book is yellowed with age, but, save for a few 
thumb prints, the pages are clean and without dog ears. 
It is still covered with the bright calico which her grand- 
mother sewed on for her to keep the book from being 
soiled or injured when the little girl carried it to school. 
Grandmother's name and the date is on the flyleaf writ- 
ten in a cramped childish hand, for grandmother was 
only eight when she got the book, and the date is near 
the beginning of the last century. She always handled 
the book with the greatest care, for they had respect 
for books in those days. 

Robert's book presents a somewhat different appear- 
ance. It was bought only a few months ago, but the 
cover is torn and battered and hangs by a thread. Inside, 
the pages are mutilated or missing, and pen sketches 



98 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

and hieroglyphics are scrawled across the text making 
it almost unreadable. As I turn through, I find the 
dignified Cicero wearing a sombrero and smoking a pipe, 
and Csesar with a beard done in India ink. The book 
has suffered every insult and indignity possible to be 
thought of by a boy of fourteen. Robert knows more 
than grandmother did at his age, but neither he nor 
the children with whom he associates have the love and 
respect for books that grandmother had as a girl. 

As for me I should as soon see a dear friend abused 
as a book I have worked with and come to know and to 
understand. I do not mind the ordinary wear of use 
and age any more than I am annoyed by wrinkles in 
the faces of my friends who are growing old, but inten- 
tional indignities hurt me. 

Is it because books are so plentiful or so cheap that 
we care so little about them? Is it because they cost 
us now no sacrifice, no struggle, no tender thought or 
anxious anticipation that we think of them so lightly 
and toss them about so carelessly? I have heard grand- 
mother tell of how happy she was and how proud when 
her father first put the little geography into her hands. 
Neither high school nor college students often feel so 
today. 

The story of Lincoln, unable to find a half dozen books 
in the community in which he lived and willing to work 
days in order that he might become the owner of a worn 
and rain-soaked volume of biography seems almost 



BOOKS AND READING 99 

unbelievable to the young boy of today who spends 
his money freely on moving picture shows and ice cream 
sodas, but who would seldom go far or suffer much to 
get a book, and who, in fact, is often bored if he is called 
upon to read one. 

Books were never so readily within the reach of all 
as today; newspapers were never before so abundant 
and so full of varied information as at the present time; 
a bulky and profusely illustrated magazine that will 
keep one reading for many hours, may be bought for 
a dime. There is no one so poor that he can not buy 
reading matter, or there are not many who are not 
now within reasonable distance of libraries with free 
access to the most varied assortment of books and 
newspapers. Few people, in this country at least, can 
assert truthfully that there is nothing for them to 
read. No doubt the very abundance of books, the ease 
with which we get at them, causes us to value them less 
than we otherwise should and to respect them less. That 
which is most difficult is obtain is most valued. Tom 
Sawyer recognized this fact when he had the garden 
fence whitewashed by his eager pals. If we had fewer 
books we should think more highly of books and respect 
them more. We see them scattered about us so abundantly 
that we take them like automobiles and aeroplanes as 
a matter of course. 

If a high school boy does not have the reading habit it 
is certainly not from lack of opportunity to acquire it. In 



100 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

the elementary school and high school curriculum more 
time is given to English, including reading, grammar, 
literature, and composition, than to any other two or 
three subjects in the school course combined. Perhaps the 
reason why young people read so badly when called upon 
orally to interpret a page, and care so little for reading, is 
that they have so much of it. We can all become sated 
with the most delightful things; I have known boys who 
ate so much cake and ice cream that they never wanted 
any again. 

Another reason, perhaps, why high school and college stu- 
dents (for the difficulty is not confined to the high school) 
read so badly and tak-e so little pleasure in reading is be- 
cause all through their school life their taste is forced, they 
are made to read what is far beyond their ability to under- 
stand and to enjoy, and they are taught to cultivate 
critical judgment rather than appreciation. They analyze 
what they read when they should be allowed to give them- 
selves over to the pleasure of reading. They attempt to be 
critics rather than lovers of books. They are told what is 
good and what effect it should have upon their minds 
and their emotions, and they play the hypocrite often 
by pretending to feel what they are told they should 
feel 

"What do you think, ^' I asked my fourteen-year-old 
boys in Sunday School a few years ago, "is the best book 
in the world? What is the best book you ever read?" 

"The Bible," one boy piously answered. 



BOOKS AND READING 101 

'^Shakspere's Macbeth," another literary hypocrite 
shouted waving his hand in the air. Not one of the boys 
told the truth; they were afraid to do so. Down in their 
hearts they were really enshrining Huckleberry Finn or one 
of the heroes of Nick Carter's exciting tales. They were 
saying what they thought they ought to say. They were 
following the example which many of us who are older set 
for them in our spoken estimate of the fine arts, especially 
of music and painting. It takes training and experience 
and education to enjoy the best things in these arts, and 
many of us have not brought ourselves to the point of 
really enjoying what is best. We yawn or sleep through a 
concert, or we stand bored before a great painting praising 
the artistic product with our Ups but getting little enjoy- 
ment out of it in our souls, because we do not yet know 
enough to enjoy it. And that is the way many boys feel 
about the literature they are forced to read and to criti- 
cise in the high school. 

There is little doubt in my mind that Mr. William Shak- 
spere was a great writer of English poetry and of the Eng- 
lish drama; he was, perhaps, the greatest writer that we 
have ever known, but he is not the most easily understood, 
nor is he ever likely to give the greatest enjoyment 
to young and immature minds. Even in college it is 
not common to find a young fellow of eighteen or twenty 
who picks up a volume of Shakspere to read for pleasure 
to fill in an hour of leisure. I confess I was not a little 
startled a few months ago when an eighteen-year-old 



102 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

convalescent in our hospital asked me to bring him a 
book to read while he was getting well. 

"What would you like?'' I asked, expecting of course 
that he would say Harold Bell Wright or 0. Henry, or 
suggest a stray copy of the Cosmopolitan or the Red Booh 

"I think I should like to read Henry V," was his reply. 
The only explanation is that he must have had a rare mind 
or an unusually inspiring teacher. 

I do not wish to suggest to high school boys that they 
are justified in spending their time on trashy reading. 
The better things they read and understand and en- 
joy, the better for them. I am convinced that they are 
asked to read many books good in themselves, but far be- 
yond their understanding and their appreciation. It is 
the reading habit which they should cultivate, and no 
one is likely to get that habit unless reading is a pleasure 
for him, unless books tempt him when he sees them lying 
about, and lure him away from his work or from other 
appealing pleasures. I know few boys who would decline 
an invitation to a moving picture show in order to finish 
an interesting book. 

There is a good deal said against the reading of trashy 
books by boys, and I think much that has been said is not 
without a foundation of truth; the practice is too general. 
I think I read up to the age of fifteen as much trashy 
stuff as any normal boy of my age. I read Mary J. Holmes 
and E. P. Roe and all their clan, from Edna Rivers to 
Barriers Burned Away. I went through the goodie-goodie 



BOOKS AND READING 103 

volumes in our Sunday school library at the rate of two or 
three a week. I waited with the utmost impatience for the 
weekly copy of the Saturday Night contributed to the 
family stock of reading matter by our hired man, and con- 
taining the most exciting tales of murder, mystery and 
adventure. I remember still the lurid title of one of these 
tales — Bentley Burroughs, or The Skeleton Hand. 

I had something on hand to read all the time, and, 
fortunately I developed the habit of reading. In the 
course of events the stock of sensational and sentimental 
and adventurous stuff gave out, but my appetite still 
had to be satisfied. I went quite naturally to Dumas 
and Scott and Cooper and Bulwer-Lytton; to Dickens 
and Eliot and Thackeray. I even read some poetry at 
my father's suggestion, and I got a good deal of insight 
into historical works. Before I was grown, I had read 
pretty widely, far more widely, in fact, than I should 
ever under any other circumstances have had the time to 
do. I am thankful every day that thus early in my life 
I became acquainted with so wide a range of literature, 
even if some of the books I read are not now contained in 
the admirable Hst suggested by President Eliot. I can not 
now see how I was hurt in any way. I got enough, after 
a while, of the poorer stuff and ultimately developed an 
appetite for something solider and better. 

I do not believe that my experience is unique. I have 
asked my friends, many of them, whose reputation for 
clear thinking and balanced judgment in literary matters 



104 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

is better than my own, and not one of them has any seri- 
ous regrets concerning his early reading, which was in 
many cases quite as Hght as mine. The reading of the 
poorer forms of Uterature often makes the good better in 
contrast. The main thing is that one should get the habit 
of reading. If that is developed early, the problem of 
cultivating a liking for what is good and of eventually de- 
veloping a real interest in what is best, is not so difficult. 

The high school boy is at the age when adventure 
and mystery are most appealing to him. He will learn 
to read this sort of literature most readily. He might 
as well be fed on Dumas and Jules Verne and Conan 
Doyle and Stevenson as upon Nick Carter; he might 
as well have good English and stimulating healthy ad- 
venture as the opposite. 

The reading habit is cultivated like any other habit, 
and the taste for books developed like any other taste, 
by practice, and persistence. We can learn anything 
if we want to do so and if we keep at it. The reading 
habit is a good one because it furnishes us a ready method 
of getting information, of learning about what has been 
done and what is doing in the world. We would stagnate 
if we did not read; we could make little progress in any 
sort of work without reading. The business or profes- 
sional man who does not read soon gets to be a back 
number in his work. 

There is nothing that can give one more pleasure" than 
the habit of reading. If one has learned to read and 



BOOKS AND READING 105 

to enjoy books he need never have a dull or a lonesome 
moment. No matter where he may be, if he has an inter- 
esting book at hand, he can soon in imagination sur- 
round himself with interesting scenes and pleasing friends, 
and his cares and his boredom will vanish. If a boy 
likes to read, an evening at home alone, a long wait in 
an otherwise dull railway station, lack of companion- 
ship for a time, isolation of any sort, will not only have 
no horrors for him, but may even be for a time a source 
of actual enjojnnent. I always like a rainy day or a 
stormy night in winter, or a quiet undisturbed Sunday 
afternoon, because it furnishes a chance to stay in-doors 
and to cultivate the companionship of an entertaining 
book. 

When I hear boys, or men, complaining of the fact 
that Sunday is such a long, dull day, that there is nowhere 
to go and nothing to do, when I see them yawning with 
the weariness of leisure and strolling aimlessly down 
the street tired of existence, I know for one thing that 
they find little comfort in religion, and for another, 
that they have not cultivated the reading habit, and 
so find little pleasure in books. I am always sorry to 
think what pleasure they have missed, and I wish that I 
might lead them into the friendships and the companion- 
ships which are so easily formed through reading. Think 
what it must mean not to have known and enjoyed Wil- 
kins Micawber, and King Lear, and Tom Tulliver, and 
D'Artagnan and Sidney Carton and Colonel Newcome 



106 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

and Tom Jones, and Becky Sharpe, and all the myriad 
of interesting characters with which literature is filled. 
Life must be pretty dull to those whose acquaintance 
is limited to real people only. 

One of the most placid and contented persons I have 
ever known was an old lady who was totally blind and 
who was forced for several years to lie in bed a good 
deal of the time alone. I used to drop in upon her fre- 
quently and usually quite unexpectedly. The great 
surprise to me was that I never found her depressed or 
with time hanging heavy on her hands. She was unifor- 
mally cheerful and happy and with a mind that seemed 
constantly occupied with something that was interest- 
ing and pleasing. 

" What do you do to occupy your time and your thoughts 
when you are so much alone/' I asked her once, "espe- 
cially when you can not see?" 

"I visit with my old friends," she said. 

Then she went on to tell me that all through early 
and middle life, although she had had little opportunity 
for education in the schools, she had been a constant 
reader. I was amazed to discover how much she had 
read and how well she remembered it. Now that she 
was old and blind she went over all these literary ex- 
periences in her mind daily, and she got from the recol- 
lection infinite pleasure and recreation. Just the day 
I had been talking to her, she told me, she had been 
recalling the incidents in Scott's Heart of Midlothian 



BOOKS AND READING 107 

the scenes of which were made more vivid to her from 
the fact that she had been born in northern England, 
had visited Edinburgh as a girl, and knew very well, 
because her own youthful feet had trodden it, the road 
which Jeanie Deans had taken from Edinburgh to London 
when she went to plead for her sister's life. Her early 
reading was the source of hourly pleasure to her, and 
made quite bearable an existence which might other- 
wise have been wretched even to contemplate. 

No one has so much time at his disposal to learn to 
read as the young person before he enters high school 
and during his high school course. More than this, 
youth is the habit-forming time, as I have said, more 
than once. If one does not learn the habit of reading 
then, he is not likely ever to acquire it. It would seem 
easy to prove that with all the opportunities furnished 
the boy for reading while he is in the elementary school, 
and after he enters high school, with the great variety 
of reading he is required to do, and with the wide range 
of books from which he may choose, he would learn to 
like something, he would cultivate his interest, and 
would continue his acquaintance with books during 
vacation and after he had graduated from high school. 
The number of boys, however, who regularly and of 
their own choice read books while they are in the high 
school and after they get out is small, and the class of 
books in which they find interest is often very poor. The 
training in English in our schools does not develop the 



108 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

reading habit generally nor does it awaken generally an 
interest in good not to say the best, literature. I have 
suggested previously that I believe the explanation of 
this condition arises from the fact that we force the taste 
of young people and feed them at first on things they can 
not assimilate. We give them literary indigestion, and 
they revolt from reading. 

There is scarcely a day of his life until he finishes high 
school that a boy might not devote at least a short time 
to reading from which he could derive both pleasure and 
profit. If you want to learn to read, select first the things 
that are most interesting to you — history, science, poetry, 
fiction, the news of the day, or whatever it may be. Read 
the best things that you can understand and enjoy. You 
will find that scientific facts as presented by Darwin 
and Huxley and John Burroughs are not only quite as 
dependable as those which commonplace writers give 
you, but they are so simply and so interestingly pre- 
sented that they read like a story book; they will develop 
your scientific interest far more quickly than if you give 
your time to some other author who knows less and writes 
worse. If you enjoy history, then read Macaulay or 
John Fiske, or Motley or any one of a dozen men who 
will give you all the facts that a less brilliant author 
might present, and who will do it in a style that is at once 
delightful and inspiring. If you are drawn to the fiction 
of heroism and adventure you will not know what de- 
light there is in romance at its best until you have tasted 



BOOKS AND READING 109 

the incomparable Dumas who will lead you through 
one volume and another with a fascination that is impos- 
sible to resist. The boy who once gets into the Three 
Musketeers and who lays it down before it is finished, 
has a self-control which is beyond my understanding. 

If you find it not easy to cultivate the reading habit 
from lack of interest or for apparent lack of time, you will 
be tempted to it rather subtly by having a book near 
by, so that when you drop into an easy chair, or stretch 
yourself on a couch, for a little rest or to wait until din- 
ner is ready, it will catch your eye or fall easily into 
your hand. If the book is your own, and especially if 
you have been led through curiosity or passing fancy 
to pay for it with your own money, the temptation 
will be all the stronger for you to see what is in it; and, 
if you have any persistence, having once begun it, you 
will be sure to stay with it until you have finished it. 
The reading of one book almost invariably leads to the 
reading of another, and so gradually the habit fastens 
itself upon you. 

The difiiculty which most men have in college or later 
in life in accomplishing as much reading as is set for 
them to do, is due to their not having cultivated the 
habit of reading rapidly. The ability to read rapidly 
comes from experience; if you have read little you are 
quite likely to read slowly. Reading is very largely 
a mechanical process acquired through daily practice 
like playing the piano or operating a typewriter. If 



110 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

it takes you all the evening to get through a few pages, 
it is quite certain that you have not cultivated very 
fully the reading habit. Here, again, the value of 
beginning while young and while you have leisure to 
cultivate the habit of reading rapidly and reading widely 
is apparent. 

The wider the range of your reading, the more en- 
joyment you will get out of it, and the greater will 
be the development of your knowledge, your sympa- 
thies, and your imagination. Everyone should read 
the daily newspapers in order that he may have an in- 
telligent knowledge of the world and its progress at home 
and abroad. No intelligent boy can now afford to be 
ignorant of the progress of events in all lands. The 
world is, after all, a pretty small place, and it is not very 
hard, if one tries, to know something about a good deal 
of it. If you read the newspaper as you should, you 
will read it pretty thoroughly from the feature news on 
the first page through the editorials to the market reports 
on the last page. The cartoons, the jokes, and the sport- 
ing page will, of course, interest you most, but you can 
easily cultivate an interest in other things. 

You should keep up with the literature of the profession 
or business in which you are engaged or in which you ex- 
pect to engage. It is not enough, however, if you are in- 
terested in farming to be satisfied with reading an agri- 
cultural journal and the local weekly paper. I know a 
good many farmers who get no further in their reading 



BOOKS AND READING 111 

than the perusal once a week of a stock journal. These are 
not very progressive men, however. The newspapers and 
the technical journals are for information largely. You 
should read something regularly for inspiration, for kind- 
ling your imagination, and for developing your ideals. 
Read poetry. The better magazines are full of pleasant 
and inspiring verse, and there is always, to fall back upon, 
the good old standbys which you have studied and are 
studying in high school. You will never be sorry if you 
form the habit early of committing to memory such lines 
or stanzas or whole poems as especially please you. All 
through your life these lines will come back to you to be a 
source of pleasure and a stimulation to happy memories. 
Middle life and old age seem to you now very remote pos- 
sibilities, but they will be on you, especially if you lead 
a busy life, almost before you know it. You will always 
be glad if while your mind is plastic and easily impressed, 
you let it dwell upon things that are pleasing and beauti- 
ful, and if at will you can recall passages from the best 
things that have been written. 

Nearly everyone reads fiction of some sort, of course — 
adventure, romance, mystery, character study, philos- 
ophy — there are many things treated in the modern novel 
or short story, and every day, almost, there seems to be a 
new magazine springing up filled with fiction and feature 
stories and attracting the eye with its bizarre and parti- 
colored cover. Most of these are rather trashy, — a good 
deal of the fiction of today is hardly worth the time 



112 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

it takes to read it. The magazines which our fathers read 
and which have stood the test for fifty years or more, are 
still the best, and one of these, at least, you ought to read 
regularly. A magazine usually announces both the qual- 
ity and the character of its contents by the refinement and 
taste of the design on its cover. The quiet ones are the 
most conservative and the most worth while. 

You will have to read some books of the present day; 
you would be thought ignorant and behind the times other- 
wise. People will continue to talk about last month's " best 
sellers," and though very often there is little reason why 
these books should sell so well, you will miss something 
if you are unacquainted with them. Your greatest pleas- 
ure in reading, however, will be in the books that have 
stood the test of time — in Scott, and Cooper and Dickens, 
and Eliot and Thackeray and Hawthorne and Steven- 
son, of whose infinite variety you can not tire. If you 
have not already made their acquaintance, you should be- 
gin at once. If you have not before this read the most 
that they have written, you have to look forward to one 
of the great pleasures of your life. 

Since I began the writing of this paper I have been read- 
ing aloud Dickens ' David Copperfield. I read it first when 
I was ten with the greatest pleasure and interest; I have 
read it since a half dozen times, I have no doubt, and yet 
I think the fact of any former readings adds rather than 
detracts from the pleasure which I get from it today. As 
long as I live it will give me joy to go through its chapters. 



BOOKS AND READING IIB 

Sometimes I hear boys say '^I don't like Stevenson," or 
''I don't like Dickens. " In such cases, however, I usually 
find that they have read very little of these authors — 
one book perhaps — and have based their judgment upon 
that one volume. Don't be discouraged if you are not 
pleased the first time you dip into an author; try some- 
thing else. No two books are more unlike than The 
Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations and any 
one who has read only Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
might not suspect that Stevenson wrote a book Hke 
Treasure Island or The Wrong Box. An author, 
like any other normal human being, has different in- 
terests and different moods, and we can not honestly 
judge him until we have seen him under different condi- 
tions. 

If from your high school course you get nothing else 
than the ability to read intelligently, an appreciation of 
books, and a liking for their companionship, the years in 
school will not have been spent in vain. If you come away 
from your high school training with a dislike for study, 
and with little or no interest in books, and no joy in the 
anticipation of reading you have missed much of what 
you should have gained. 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 

The social activities of the young almost always seem 
excessive to the middle-aged. There are few things we 
forget so easily as the escapades of youth. A middle-aged 
father was advising his young son against the evils of 
dancing. 

^'But you danced, father, when you were a boy," the 
son protested. 

^^True," the father replied, ''but I have seen the folly 
of it." 

"Well," the boy replied, "I want to see the folly of it, 
too." 

It is a very normal desire for a young boy to want to 
have regular and pleasant association with other young 
people both girls and boys, and in what I say in this paper 
I do not overlook this fact. It is a desire the gratification 
of which may very easily be carried to excess; it is a desire 
which parents, especially fathers, are wont to forget that 
they ever themselves felt. I have never had a son, I am 
sorry to say, to whom I could tell how hard I worked when 
a boy, how little money I spent, how seldom I stayed out 
at night or went to social parties, but I have listened to 
other fathers discoursing thus virtuously to their sons, so 
I know that they had forgotten their youth as I might 
have done had I but had a chance. Social customs change. 

114 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 115 

We should not expect our children to enjoy themselves 
quite as we did at their age. The pleasures in which I 
indulged as a boy are very different from those in which 
my young nephews take delight, though I can not see 
that mine were either saner or more restrained than theirs, 
and I try to remember this fact when I am tempted to 
criticise the social life of the young people of today. I 
should hardly be excusable, however, if I did not try to 
give them the benefit of my experience. 

Men, young and old, are social animals. All of us like 
to join things. It is as difficult for me to refuse an invita- 
tion to become a member of a club or a fraternity or an 
organization as it is to resist the seductive talk of a book 
agent when he spreads his attractive wares before my eyes. 
I feel like a hero if I can summon the courage to turn him 
down. We joined church or the Democratic party, I 
have no doubt, not so much from any strong religious or 
political convictions as from the fact that we were asked; 
we found it difficult to resist a chance to join, and we 
yielded. I am not arguing, however, that there is always 
profit in j oining. Boys feel very much about j oining things 
as men do. When they go into a high school fraternity, 
they are but imitating their fathers or their older brothers 
in college each of whom, no doubt, has his club or his fra- 
ternity. Yet, on the whole, I am convinced that mem- 
bership in a high school fraternity is not a good thing. 

Such an organization might be beneficial if it were based 
upon more strictly democratic principles than it often is. 



116 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

Boys are chosen usually for membership not so much be*- 
cause of similarity of tastes and similarity of character as 
from similarity of their fathers ' income and social or busi- 
ness position. Even in the country town in which I live, 
I could without much chance of error pick out the boys 
who, when they leave the graded schools, will be asked to 
join one or another of the high school fraternities existing 
in the local high school, and I could do it without 
knowing the boys personally at all, but simply from my 
knowledge of their parents and from my acquaintance 
with their financial rating. A boy in moderate or meager 
circumstances very seldom gets into such an organization, 
unless perchance he be an athlete, who is likely to be taken 
because he is a hero. The poor boy can not afford to be- 
long; the boy without social prestige would queer the 
others. 

The high school fraternity, excepting in private acade- 
mies and boarding schools, exists not so much to bring boys 
together and to strengthen the friendly relations existing 
between them as to develop a rather excessive social life 
in which girls are also to a large degree involved. In a 
private or boarding school the conditions of living are 
different and the necessity for banding together more 
justifiable. Such boys are away from home, and they 
miss their customary social life, and whatever helps to 
make for them some of the associations and comforts of 
home is good. A boys' fraternity in a private academy, 
is, in a large degree, like a college fraternity and usu- 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 117 

ally is free from the objectionable features which charac- 
terize such an organization in a city high school. It is 
largely to make boys acquainted with each other, and 
not so much to bring the members into closer and more 
frequent association with girls. It makes for healthy 
friendship. 

The high school fraternity is too frequently little more 
than a dancing club. Its meetings are taken up largely 
with discussions of the girl friends of the members, in 
making arrangements for the next dance, or in trying 
to determine how best to meet the expenses of the last 
one. If it gave boys definite work to do, if it developed in 
them qualities of leadership, or helped them the better to 
assume responsibility while giving them social training, I 
should not so much object, but as I have seen the members 
of such an organization after they are out of high school 
and in college, I can not see that it often does any of these 
things for them. 

My observation of the high school fraternity man after 
he has entered college is that he is usually a very in- 
different student with little scholastic ambition. His 
ambitions are mainly social. He makes a poor fra- 
ternity man in college, beause he has not realized in his 
high school fraternity any of the fundamental principles 
of adult fraternity life. Fraternity officers all over the 
country are agreed upon this point, and have passed a res- 
olution that after 1920 no high school fraternity man will 
be eligible for membership in a college Greek letter fra- 



118 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

ternity. The reason for this action is that the high school 
fraternity man is selfish, undemocratic, hard to control, 
and unwilling to assume responsibility. 

The expense of membership in such an organization, 
even for people in good circumstances, is not to be 
overlooked. The high school fraternity member con- 
siders himself quite grown up, and is not content in 
his social activities to be considered other than a man 
with all the accessories that accompany adult, manly, 
social life. Taxis and candy and flowers and evening 
clothes all form a part of his social functions; dinner 
dances and all night sessions are not unusual. The 
high school boy attempts to imitate all the social ex- 
cesses and extravagances of his older friends and ac- 
quaintances. Sometimes there are even rumors of drink- 
ing and gambling and immorality, exaggerated perhaps, 
but having, no doubt, some small foundation in fact. 

Only last year I called to my office two freshmen in col- 
lege who were developing a reputation for idleness and in- 
temperance. They came from conservative, religious, and 
well-to-do families, so that I could scarcely believe the tales 
concerning them which were floating about the campus. 
They admitted, however, that they were drinking, but of 
this fact their parents had no suspicion, they said. 

"When did you begin?" I asked. 

" When we were sophomores in high school, " was the 
reply. ''The fellows in our fraternity all thought it was 
smart to drink." 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 119 

It is the secrecy of the fraternity no doubt, that encour- 
ages such escapades. It is one of the privileges of club life, 
the boy thinks, to be able unmolested to attempt risque 
things, and being alone in his deliberations and free from 
the guiding hand or the warning voice of older men, he 
slips easily into temptation. 

The high school fraternity is in little or no sense a 
real brotherhood. Its purpose is not to bring boys to- 
gether for mutual gelf-help. It seldom inculcates high 
moral ideals or develops interest in good scholarship 
even if it does not actually discourage these things. The 
members are not selected because they show fitness 
for doing well the work of high school, but rather because 
they dress well, dance well, are popular with the girls, 
and are able to spend money freely upon social pleasure. 
The high school fraternity seldom if ever has for its pur- 
pose the improving of general social conditions in the 
school or the desire to be an aid to the school authorities in 
the intelligent and satisfactory control of school affairs. 
On the contrary it often pulls down scholastic standards, 
it is a hindrance rather than a help in school man- 
agement, and it contributes to the pleasure of only a 
very limited and select number of students. Healthy 
social activity in the high school should be general, demo- 
cratic, an activity into which every respectable and 
well-mannered member of the school may enter, and not 
limited to a few people who are possessed of money. 

I have seldom known a high school fraternity which 



120 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

did not stir up trouble. The exelusiveness of it arouses 
envy in the minds of those who are not invited to join. 
It develops cliques and factions, and breaks down rather 
than strengthens high school spirit. It often makes a 
boy arrogant and something of a cad. For all these 
reasons I believe the high school fraternity is in a ma- 
jority of cases not the healthiest and best medium for 
the social activities of the high school boy. It develops 
social selfishness, its. members are likely to overestimate 
their own social importance, it encourages extravagance 
in money matters and a contempt for others who are 
outside of this social aristocracy. If I had a boy I should 
be sorry if he became a member of such an organization. 
A few evenings ago I attended a dance to which one 
of these high school fraternity boys had been invited. 
He came in his own car and brought with him his "steady 
girl." He was dressed with extreme care in a decidedly 
extreme style. She was fifteen perhaps, and he a year 
older. She showed all the toilet artifices, all the shades of 
coloration, of the beauty parlor. They danced together 
continuously throughout the evening, they exhibited the 
most extreme contortions and gyrations of the ''shimmy" 
they omitted the usual courtesy of speaking to the chaper- 
ones, and held themselves entirely aloof throughout 
the evening from contact with their conservative com- 
panions. They admitted by their actions that they 
were the social elect, the aristocracy who could not bring 
themselves to the vulgar level of the crowd. 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 121 

I should not, perhaps, blame the boy's lack of good 
manners and good taste upon his fraternity any more 
than I should hold it responsible for his failure to pass 
his high school course in English, but the fraternity, 
when it took him in, knew what he was, that he had 
neither moral nor intellectual ideals, that he had no 
conception of good manners, though his father, it is true, 
is a prominent professional man. It was this last fact 
that weighed most heavily in the balance when the boy 
was being considered for membership. My quarrel 
with the fraternity lies in the fact that having taken 
him in it has done nothing to improve him, but on the 
contrary has rather encouraged him in his extreme habits. 
It is not giving him the sort of social training that a boy 
should get in high school. 

We can never quite get away from the fact in the 
discussion of a high school boy's social activities that 
most high schools are coeducational. In considering 
boys, we can not ignore the fact that girls, too, come in 
for a large share of consideration. It is a good thing for 
a young boy to have a healthy conventional association 
with girls. It helps him morally and socially. I think 
that a boy can have no stronger moral influence than 
the companionship of a high-principled, well-balanced 
girl. The boy, however, who limits his associations to 
girls, or especially to one girl, or who gives a considerable 
part of his leisure time to such an association is weakened 
by it. He becomes soft and mushy; he moons around 



122 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

sentimentally taking little pleasure, usually, in the vig- 
orous physical sports which go far to make a man. He 
develops feminine rather than masculine traits. Highly 
as I regard the benefits which come to a young fellow 
from his regular relationships with the right sort of girls, 
I have no hesitancy in saying that the strong, aggressive, 
manly qualities which we all want to see in a developing 
boy come from his regular contact and association with 
those of his own sex. Constant and uninterrupted as- 
sociation with girls induces fastidiousness and over- 
refinement in a boy. It takes the fight out of him, it 
tends toward laziness and lassitude. Such a boy drops 
easily into a rocking chair or a porch swing. He 
learns usually to play some stringed instrument like the 
ukelele or the mandolin, and he talks sentimental non- 
sense. 

The young boy with the steady girl is the worst of 
all. Whenever a boy begins to sing with feeling : 

Only one girl in this world for me, 
Only one girl has my sympathy, 

his high school work is likely to go glimmering. It is 
not always helpful to have a half dozen to divide his 
attention during his leisure hours; it is positively hope- 
less if he can see only one on the horizon. The high 
school boy who devotes his social attentions exclusively 
to one girl gets little social training or experience. He 
does not learn to adapt himself to different tempera- 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 123 

ments, he is likely to become lax in his manners and to 
ignore social conventions. He comes to know the girl 
so well that he often does not take the trouble to be 
scrupulously polite to her. There is likely to develop 
a dangerous familiarity which breaks down the respect 
and the courtesy which every boy ought to show to the 
girls of his acquaintance and to women generally. ' ' Spoon- 
ing '' is ruinous to a boy, morally and socially. 

Such a boy I see every day. He is in reality girl crazy. 
Every morning he walks down the street to meet her 
and to carry her books to school. Twice a day they 
walk back and forth together, each quite oblivious of 
any presence but the other. They hang on each other. 
Every evening, if the weather permits, they go strolling 
until long past the proper hour for children to be in bed. 
Late at night I often recognize his sentimental whistle 
as he goes back home after being with her during the 
evening. He is failing in his studies; he could be expected 
to do nothing else, for he sees nothing, thinks of nothing, 
dreams of no one but the girl; and he treats her and 
speaks of her with a suggestion of ownership that is 
disgusting. In this relation as in many others, there 
is safety in numbers, for if there were a half dozen he 
would waste far less time and energy than in the present 
instance, and he would learn more that is useful and help- 
ful in social matters. 

There is the boy in high school also who goes to 
the opposite extreme — who "can't see a girl at all." 



124 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

He is speechless when in the presence of the girls, he 
blushes crimson if one addresses a remark to him, he 
has no interest in social activities, and no finesse in 
social conventionalities. When he comes into a room 
he is all hands and legs; the furniture seems to become 
animate and to take delight in getting into his way 
so that he may the more easily stumble over it. It 
agonizes him to enter a room where there are girls, it 
is utterly impossible for him unassisted to get out of 
one. He can never think of anything to say. 

Such a boy would be benefited immeasurably if 
he forced himself a little more into social activities, if 
he studied to some extent how to carry on a conversa- 
tion, how to please people, how to come and go without 
awkwardness and embarrassment. Nothing causes self- 
consciousness more than a lack of acquaintance with 
social usage and social forms, and nothing acquaints 
one with these details more quickly than a little practice 
and experience. No boy is so awkward or so crude or 
so shy that he can not learn with a little training to over- 
come these traits and to enjoy his social relations with 
other young people. As soon as he overcomes his first 
embarrassment he will be surprised at his former point 
of view. 

There is a real value to the growing boy in social ac- 
tivities, in learning to meet men as well as women, and 
older men and women as well as those who are of their 
own age; boys can learn how, and it should be considered 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 125 

a necessary part of their education that they do so. 
I was setthng down after dinner, not long ago, to a quiet 
evening of reading before the grate fire when the telephone 
rang. I answered the call. 

"It's Billy Charters," I explained, as I came back with 
a rather downcast air. "He has just come to town, and he 
wants to come over and call this evening. It's a trial, I 
know, but I couldn't in decency say less than that we'd be 
glad to see him." 

We had known Billy's uncle a number of years ago, and 
had met his mother once on a visit to Boston; there was no 
mistaking our duty, and we braced up for a dull evening. 
The prospect seemed all the more dull in view of the mem- 
ory of Barker's call on the previous Sunday afternoon. 
Barker is a neighbor's boy who had arrived just after 
dinner — we have dinner at one on Sundays — and we wore 
ourselves to a thin edge in an attempt to introduce top- 
ics of conversation that would arouse even a remote in- 
terest and enthusiasm on his part. He could not be made 
to talk, so we lapsed into silence and filled up the time 
by playing band pieces on the victrola. Other callers came 
and went, but he hung on. 

He was eager to go, but he did not know how. Finally 
he arose and expressed an intention of bringing his call to 
a close. Everyone stood — and continued to stand twenty 
minutes — watching Barker trying to get out. It was only 
by my moving him gradually toward the front door and 
all but pushing him into the street that he ultimately got 



126 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

away; and yet Barker was having as unpleasant a time 
as we were. He had had no social experience. 

I heard Billy's step on the walk at a quarter of eight, 
and I laid down my book with a regretful sigh to usher him 
in. He proved to be a healthy, cheerful fellow of eighteen 
who settled down in one of our arm-chairs with a com- 
fortable, easy air that relieved the situation at once. He 
asked for the people whom he had met when he had visited 
in our town as a child. He brought us cheerful messages 
from his uncle's family, and he related a few hilarious tales 
of his experiences in learning to fly. He seemed inter- 
ested in all that we had to say, and followed up every con- 
versational lead with a few ideas of his own. If the talk 
ever gave signs of lagging, he was ready with a question 
or a remark. He was in no sense fresh; he was simply 
alert and ready to do his share of the social drudgery. He 
showed that he had made the most of his social expe- 
riences. He rose at a quarter past eight. 

"I knew it was a shame to disturb you on an evening 
like this," he said, ''when you'd no doubt far rather read 
than be bored by me, but it will please mother to know that 
I've called, and you've given me an awfully pleasant half 
hour. May I come again? " He shook hands, and in a 
moment we heard his quick footsteps going down the walk. 

"What a nice boy Billy Charters is," my wife said to 
me as we were going up stairs after a pleasant two hours 
of reading. " I believe we ought to ask him to dinner next 
Sunday." 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 127 

"That's just what I was thinking," I repHed. And yet 
all the difference between Billy and Barker was that Billy 
had learned by observation and experience and Barker had 
not. 

Too much of the social energy of the high school boy at 
the present time, especially in his relations with girls, is 
expended in dancing. There is scarcely an organization of 
young fellows, no matter what its primary purpose seems to 
have been, whether athletic, philanthropic, religious or ed- 
ucational, which does not, when it comes to any expression 
of social hfe, think first of giving a dance. It seems, bar- 
ring the practice of strolling aimlessly about the streets, the 
only way a boy can conceive of to give a girl a good time. 
He could play tennis with her, if he only thought so, and, 
even if her serve is not so good as his, it might improve 
from practice and under his careful teaching. He could 
develop her interest and her skill at golf and by so do- 
ing contribute to her pleasure and her physical health. 
He could take her for a walk into the country, he could 
teach her to row a boat or to drive a car, or perhaps some 
time she might teach him one of these things. He may 
object to some of these pastimes on the ground that 
they are too strenuous and tiring, but I am sure it 
can easily be shown that to drag oneself over a none 
too smooth floor for four hours or so, in an atmosphere 
that is often close and stuffy and full of dust is quite as 
tiring and much less stimulating than is an equal amount 
of exercise in the open air. In the open air, moreover, in the 



128 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

cultivation of those sports to which I have referred, there is 
a chance for far more f riendhness and far less familiarity 
than in dancing. There is, too, the opportunity for the de- 
velopment of courtesy and thoughtfulness, for the culti- 
vation of little polite attentions which are good for a boy 
to know and to practice. 

Before he gets through the high school a boy should 
have learned a good many things about conventional so- 
cial customs, and should have gained a certain respect for 
them. In themselves these customs may mean very little, 
but observance of them marks us as experienced and 
thoughtful, and failure to observe them generally indicates 
that we are crude and careless. It is a little thing to call 
after one has been invited to dinner, to rise when a lady 
comes into the room, to speak to the hostess or the chap- 
erones at a party, to take your hat off when you talk to a 
woman on the street, or to eliminate ''say'^ and "listen" 
when beginning a conversation, but these are the little 
things which prove either that one has kept his eyes open 
and has seen how really careful, experienced people act, or 
that one has gone about with those whose social activities 
have been pretty limited. 

If there were no other reason for a boy's not confining 
his attentions to but one girl the reason I have suggested 
above would be sufficient. Social activities are for train- 
ing as well as for pleasure. Through his associations with 
other young people a boy comes to know how to adapt 
himself to varying conditions and varying temperaments. 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 129 

He learns how easily to meet different sorts of people and 
ultimately to enjoy different sorts. The man who travels 
from one state to another or from one county to another 
comes in time to have a broader view of things. He gains 
in experience at each new stopping place, he finds new 
pleasures and new interests wherever he goes, and more 
than this he develops new powers of enjoyment. The man 
who knows but one city or who has lived in a country town 
all his life does not know what his powers of enjoyment 
are until he has given himself a chance to see what other 
places there are to give him pleasure. So every young 
boy in the developing of friendly relationships between 
his boy and girl associates should give himself as diversi- 
fied an acquaintance as possible. The more people he 
knows the better; the more girls he knows the safer for 
him. It is only through experience and the testing of our- 
selves that we really come to know the sort of people the 
association with whom will give us most help and most 
happiness. 

I have seen a good many young fellows who in high 
school settled their girl friendships for life. It is usually a 
mistake. Boys are too inexperienced and too immature 
at that age to determine what will satisfy them later in 
life. High school friendships are healthy and stimulating; 
high school engagements are more often than otherwise a 
handicap to intellectual and business progress. The high 
school boy who comes to college engaged to be married sel- 
dom does well in college, and is unlikely to get out of col- 



130 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

lege life as much as he should. He is like the college boy 
who always goes home at week ends; his interests are di- 
vided, his heart is in two places, and he does justice to 
neither. 

In his eagerness for a good time the boy, like his older 
brother at times, is rather careless in his choice of his girl 
associates. He chooses the girl who is a ''good fellow," 
who is not too prudish and exacting in her insistence upon 
conventionalities, who is ready for any sort of lark, and 
who, while she is not in any sense of disreputable character, 
is at least careless and thoughtless and ''easy" to get on 
with. She does not hold him to his best behavior or criti- 
cise him when he is careless in his talk or familiar in his 
manner. It is doubtful if such a relationship, and there 
are far too many of them, results in any more enjoyment to 
either of the persons concerned. It is quite certain that 
such a girl always loses the respect of the boy who takes 
advantage of her weakness and carelessness, neither de- 
rives any helpful social training from the relationship, 
and one of them at least loses something of idealism and 
cleanness of character. 

I watched a cheap show unload at the railway station 
the other day. It had come to town for a nine-days run 
in the open air. There were following it all sorts of care- 
less and disreputable women. The disheartening thing 
about it all was the rapidity with which these women 
picked up the young boys standing about. Most of 
these young fellows had no evil intentions, but the daring 



SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 131 

and the adventure appealed to them. They thought it 
was good fun; it was something to joke about later. I 
wish I could make it clear that nothing stains a boy's 
character and lowers his ideals, nothing leaves so per- 
manent a vulgar impression upon his mind as associating 
with women whose character is low. It leaves the stain 
that will not come off. 

A boy who wants to get the greatest good and the 
greatest permanent satisfaction and happiness out of life 
will keep his social relationships on the highest possible 
plane. The girl who keeps him at a distance, who holds 
him to his best manners and his best behavior is giving 
him the best training and in reality the best time. 



MANNERS AND MORALS 

I was looking through the book shelves the other day 
in search of a misplaced book which I was wanting, when 
I came upon a pretentious volume that took me back al- 
most to the beginning of time for me. GaskelVs Comr- 
pendium of Forms it was called, and a perusal of it was 
guaranteed to prepare one thoroughly for every line of 
endeavor, and for every emergency of life. The author 
was equally at home in science and in literature, in religion 
and in art, and in all the finesse of social etiquette and po- 
etic expression. 

I was fifteen when I bought it, filled with the first im- 
pulses to attain a distinct social success in the rural com- 
munity in which I lived, and yet modest enough to admit 
that there were many of the graces of society which I had 
not yet acquired, and many of the exactions of good man- 
ners with which I was not familiar. A smooth-tongued 
college student, trying to earn enough money during the 
sunmier to keep him going through the winter, sold it 
to me, and guaranteed it to give satisfaction or the money 
would be refunded. The price was S5.50 in exquisite silk 
cloth and S7.00 in full morocco. 

The book contained everything from how to grow beets 
to the ten commandments; it gave explicit information on 
the widest variety of topics from how to open a set of ac- 

132 



MANNERS AND MORALS 133 

counts to the proper method of approaching a young 
woman with an offer of marriage. I can not say that it ever 
got me very far, however, in any of the arts which it pro- 
fessed to teach except, perhaps, to impress me more 
strongly with my ignorance, to convince me of how Uttle 
of manners and morals may be learned from books, and 
yet to cause me to see how necessary it is that we have 
some knowledge of these things and practice them early 
in life. Tiie ill-mannered, crude boy in high school seldom, 
in my experience, develops into the gracious, easy man- 
nered man. The high school age is the habit-forming age; 
it is the age when principles of action are developed, and 
when moral and social ideals are set up. For these things 
the school and the home have pretty heavy responsibilities 
resting upon them, and these things are not likely to be 
learned from books. 

We are tremendously practical these days. Our idea 
of education is that it consists mostly of facts and general 
information concerning mathematics and literature and 
science and language. We must know the immediate and 
practical purpose of these facts, too, if we consent to as- 
similate them. The average boy who follows a curricu- 
lum in high school or who studies any particular subject 
wants to be shown where he will profit by it. Unless he 
can see that he can cash in on his work before he has gone 
far, his enthusiasm wanes. The doing of a thing for its 
own sake makes no appeal to him; there must be a definite 
and specific financial consideration assured him. 



134 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

There are few things, excepting good morals, which are 
of more real value to a boy than good taste and good man- 
mers; they are among the things that pay. Both the prin- 
ciples and the practice should be learned in school, for 
principles here are of little value unless they can be car- 
ried into practice every day on the street, in the home, 
and in the classroom. I asked a well-known engineer in 
New Haven once what advice he would give to a young 
technical man who was hunting a job. 

"Tell him," was the answer, ''to choose his neckties 
thoughtfully and to be careful of his manners." 

I asked another prominent man of affairs not long 
ago what special criticism he made of the young fellows 
who came to him for employment. 

''Their English is poor, and their laundry bills too 
small," was his reply. 

Good manners will accomplish a great deal for a boy 
when other things fail. As an executive officer, I am 
charged with the responsibility of giving or denying 
special privileges to students in the institution to which 
I belong. I try to be as consistent and unprejudiced 
as any one with human instincts and emotions can be, 
and yet I am sure I am often uneven in my decisions; 
I am often "worked," as boys say. 

Carter came in at Thanksgiving time to ask for an 
extension of leave. He is a freshman and had not been 
home since September. His case was fair, but he presented 
it badly. When I hesitated, he grew irritated and as- 



MANNERS AND MORALS 135 

sumed a rather arrogant and impudent manner. If I 
did not let him go it was a ''rotten shame," and not in 
any sense giving him a "square deal," he asserted. There 
was nothing to do but to refuse his request if I were to 
keep my self-respect, and he flushed hot and banged 
the door furiously as he went out. 

Then Hughes came in, smiling and gracious and 
frank. 

" We boys are a terrible bother to you, aren't we ? " 
he began. 

"Not always," I said. "What would you like?" 

"It's nervy in me to ask, I know," he went on, "but 
I don't want to come back until Tuesday morning after 
Thanksgiving. I haven't much of an excuse you'll think, 
but there's a party Monday night, and there's a girl 
at home I know, and — and I'd like to take her to the 
party." He looked up blushing. 

Well, there was a girl once I knew — there is yet in 
fact — whom I liked tremendously well to take to a party. 

"That'll be all right, Hughes," I said; "give her my 
love." 

Now, when I thought it over at night, I wasn't quite 
sure that I'd been fair to Carter. He had as good a case 
as Hughes; he had simply put it unfortunately. He 
didn't have good manners, and I had refused him only 
because he was not quite polite. I have an idea that 
many people do the same sort of thing for a similar reason. 

Good manners must be genuine to make a permanent 



136 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

impression, must be based upon a real desire to give 
pleasure and comfort to others. When people first met 
McKee they thought him the most charming boy im- 
aginable. He was always on his feet when a lady came 
into the room; he never talked to a girl without taking 
off his hat, as any polite boy would do; he showed all 
the externals of respect for his teachers and for his elders. 
He was as punctilious in standing at attention and say- 
ing *'sir" as a boy just out of military school. He was 
quiet, attentive, and thoughtful. But when one came 
to know him better one realized that he was tricky, 
deceitful, given to profane and vulgar talk. His ap- 
parent politeness was only a subterfuge for the accom- 
plishment of his selfish purposes. When those who had 
to associate with him found out his real character, his 
false politeness became an insult and a lie. 

A boy is, of course, supposed to learn good manners 
at home, but as often as not he fails. He is not judged 
at home with an impartial eye; his little slips are over- 
looked or condoned. If he is the youngest or the only 
child or the child of well-to-do parents, he is usually 
spoiled and made selfish, and as I have just said, the 
selfish boy is seldom polite. Sometimes he comes from 
a home where the courtesies of life are little known or still 
less practiced, and where there is little for him to learn. 
In more cases than otherwise it falls back upon the schools 
and especially upon the high school and the academy 
to inculcate in him the principles of good manners. It 



MANNERS AND MORALS 137 

is upon his teacher that he must rely both for princi- 
ples and for illustration of their practice. 

There was a letter in my morning mail a few days 
ago from Porter that brought me pleasure and surprise. 
Most of my letters from undergraduates begin: "You 
will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, but the fact 
is I want something," but Porter wanted nothing. He 
is only seventeen. His father is a working man; his 
mother is without education and is busy from dawn to 
dark with the household cares incident to a large family. 
The boy has had no social experience; and one could not 
reasonably expect much social finesse in him. The note 
which he had written me was carefully written, in un- 
questionably good form. It was frank and boyish but 
phrased in as throughly good taste as might have been 
shown by a trained social secretary. 

I had done the boy a trifling kindness when he was 
ill in the hospital — an attention which a thousand boys 
had received from my hands — or yours perhaps — ^be- 
fore and had passed by unnoticed and unacknowledged. 
His note was to express his appreciation of my courtesy 
and to thank me for it. It had pleased both him and 
his parents, he said, to have me come and see him, and 
the book I had loaned him he had thoroughly enjoyed. 
His thoughtfulness touched me; it made me happy all 
day long, and it left a pleasant memory which will not 
soon fade. I knew where he received his inspiration. 
It was from some teacher in the high school — sensible, 



138 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

sympathetic — who had given him the idea and left the 
impression in his mind. 

In contrast to this was another experience I had only 
a little while ago. A young fellow came to see me who 
had been dismissed from one institution and who wished 
to enter another. He was the son of a well-to-do man; 
he had been brought up under good social conditions; 
he might very reasonably have been expected to have 
an acquaintance with good social form. I listened to 
his story, and I saw that his situation was a most diffi- 
cult one and one that very much required that he have 
a friend at court to make a strong plea for him. I had 
never seen him before, but I undertook to help him. I 
wrote a letter to a college officer in another institution, 
a man with whom I had an intimate acquaintance, and I 
gave it to the boy. I learned afterwards that it accom- 
plished the purpose for which it was written and se- 
cured for the young fellow admission to the other institu- 
tion. I have no recollection that he thanked me when I 
gave him the letter, and I know that he has not done so 
since. I have never had a word from him, and some way 
I can't help but wonder who taught him English com- 
position in high school, who is responsible for his manners. 

A friend of mine not long ago invited to dinner a half 
dozen boys just out of high school and away from home 
for the first time. The invitation was given in all kind- 
ness. She hoped to give pleasure to young fellows whom 
she imagined to be homesick, and it was at no little 



MANNERS AND MORALS 139 

trouble and self-sacrifice that she prepared the meal. 
Two of the boys did not reply at all to her note, the other 
four accepted her invitation, but only two showed up 
at the dinner. Not one has called on her or in any way 
acknowledged her courtesy since, and yet they had all 
come from excellent high schools and some of them had 
been brought up in families who admitted they were 
above the middle classes. It was annoying to the hostess, 
but, of course, the person who really suffered the most 
was the boy himself whose training had been so inade- 
quate. 

Every autumn I watch the long line of freshmen just 
out of the academy or the high school as they go 
through the preliminary steps to enter college. The 
registrar's office is just across the hall from my own. 
Half the boys do business with their hats on, though 
most of the registrar's clerks are young women, and 
other attractive young women are standing about them 
— standing sometimes even when the young men are 
sitting. Taking the hat off is, of course, only a con- 
vention meaningless in itself, but it has come to suggest 
respect for women, respect for authority, respect for 
the house that shelters us, and no gentleman can afford 
to ignore it. I see these same boys later smoking at 
parties or as they walk down the street with young women, 
unconscious of the fact that by so doing they are pro- 
claiming their lack of good breeding. 

There are a thousand courtesies and conventions to be 



140 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

learned in high school — courtesies to women, respect for 
authority, the acknowledgment of kindnesses received, 
attention to the wishes and comforts of others, regard for 
one's elders, attention to the conventionalities of the 
society in which we live, the expression of sympathy in sor- 
row, of joy in success, of congratulation in the accom- 
plishment of what our friends and acquaintances have at- 
tempted. Much of this finds expression in the thoughtful 
words which we may utter when face to face with friends, 
but more of it will be seen in the note of thanks or congrat- 
ulation or condolence which requires only a few moments 
to write and which brings the greater pleasure often be- 
cause it is unexpected. A brief, frank, well-worded note 
will often bring more pleasure to the recipient than a 
costly gift. 

But after all you must have something more than mere 
good manners. Every day, almost, I am called upon 
to write letters recommending young fellows whom I 
have known while they were in college. Those who make 
inquiry always want information in very specific things. 
Is the man honest, can his word be relied upon, is he a 
fellow of clean and temperate habits, does he gamble? 
The men themselves who ask these questions may not be 
wholly exemplary in their own conduct, but they do not 
care to employ men who can not furnish a clean record. 
It is during the years of physical and mental development 
in the high school that moral principles are formulated 
and strengthened quite as much as at home. 



MANNERS AND MORALS 141 

Sometimes the boy with good manners and rather un- 
certain morals seems to manage as well as if his principles 
of conduct were quite above reproach. One of the best- 
mannered boys I have ever known was of this sort. He 
was good-tempered, polite, thoughtful of others, clever, 
a veritable Steerforth, in fact. He never seemed either to 
say or do the tactless thing, and he was loved by many 
people and thought charming by more. But one did not 
know him long until it became evident that he was selfish. 
He never did a kindness that involved a personal sacrifice. 
He never gave up or resisted anything that furnished him 
personal or physical pleasure. The result was inevitable. 
He made friends only to use them for his own ends; he 
was honest only when honesty subserved his purpose. He 
wasted his money, he learned to gamble, to drink, to en- 
gage in the most unclean practices simply because he had 
no real moral principles. He is charming still at forty, 
but no one trusts him; he picks up a precarious liveli- 
hook by the most irregular business methods. He might 
have been anything he chose if he had been honest and 
clean. 

Sometimes the boy with good morals and without the 
finesse of good manners grows a trifle discouraged. 

"It doesn't pay," he affirms. "It is the smooth guy 
who gets by.'' 

He finds himself unpopular, ignored, made fun of, and 
he attributes the result to his rigid principles rather than 
to his lack of tact, or to his crude manners. A boy with 



142 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

good principles and good manners is invincible. He has 
friends, he commands respect, he has two strong and 
trusty weapons with which to combat temptation and to 
meet difficulty. 

First of all you will have to be honest. The line be- 
tween what is honest and what is not is not so widely 
drawn even among men of experience that it is not strange 
that young boys should often become confused in the 
matter, and yet the distinction between what is mine and 
what is thine, between borrowing and theft, between 
crime and a practical joke ought to be distinguishable. 

Few boys would give a burglar a leg into the window of 
a house which he was about to rob, yet it takes more prin- 
ciple than most boys possess to refuse to give help to a 
needy friend or even to a passing acquaintance who asks 
for it in a school examination. If he demurs at all, it is 
quite as often from the fear of being detected as from any 
moral principle which actuates him, though one act is as 
undeniably dishonest as the other. I have put the question 
to scores of boys, yet I have seen few who did not feel that 
it was rather a virtue than otherwise to help a man who is 
in trouble even though the help was simply an aid to dis- 
honesty. I have even known fathers who, while they 
would have been sorry to have their sons crib, were yet 
rather proud that these same sons had aided some one else 
to be dishonest. 

There is often a feeling among boys, also, that an exam- 
ination in school is not a test of their knowledge but a con- 



MANNERS AND MORALS 143 

test between teacher and pupil — something similar, in 
fact, to love or war where anything is fair if it is not found 
out. They do not realize that when they write their 
names on an examination, they are virtually saying ''The 
contents of this paper are absolutely mine. " 

"I must run along," a high school boy calling at my 
house said to me not many evenings ago. "I have to 
write a theme for Blanche; she loaned me her algebra prob- 
blems, and I must pay her back." 

His is a common practice, but it is the beginning of a 
sort of dishonesty which helps to weaken principle and to 
undermine good scholarship. 

A young friend of mine came home from school one even- 
ing in spring with a big bunch of roses in his hands. 

"Where did you get the flowers, John?" his father in- 
quired. 

"Out of Mrs. Perkins' yard," was the reply. 

"Did she give them to you?" 

"No, Fred and I just took them." 

Fred was standing by holding an even larger bunch. 

"Go to Mrs. Perkins and give her back the roses," the 
father said, "and tell her that you didn't realize when you 
took them that you were actually stealing." 

"But, father, I don't know Mrs. Perkins," John pro- 
tested. 

" You'll know her when you have had this talk with her," 
was the reassuring reply, "and I'm sure you will find it 
easier next time not to take other people's property." 



144 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

"I should not have humiliated my son in that way," 
Fred's father said to John's later when they were talking 
the matter over. 

"Such a trifling humiliation is not to be considered," 
the other man replied, "if I help to make my son 
honest." 

I was going down town not long ago, and I invited Bill 
to go with me. We were to take the street car, and it was 
naturally to be supposed that, since I had extended the 
invitation to him, I would be responsible for the fare. I 
ran my hand into my pocket as we started and found a 
quarter there, so I knew that I could finance the trip 
easily. We did our errand, and were on the car coming 
back when I discovered that I still had the twenty-five 
cerits unbroken in my pocket. The conductor on the 
down trip had evidently passed me up when collecting 
fares, and it had escaped my notice. As he came up to me 
now, I handed him the coin, saying " Two fares. " He rang 
up two but gave me twenty cents in change. 

"What shall I do? " I asked Bill. "We did not pay our 
fares going down, and the conductor has just short changed 
himself a nickel." 

"Your're a fool if you give the man the fare for the 
down town trip, but you should pay him the nickel on 
which he just now made a mistake." 

"Why?" I inquired. 

"The dime is the company's loss, and it was their fault 
they didn't collect it. The conductor will have to make 



MANNERS AND MORALS 145 

good on the nickel when he cashes in, if you don't give it 
to him." 

I have put the case up to a hundred boys since that time, 
and they have all given me the same answer. It is all 
right, they think, to steal from a corporation, but not 
quite honest to steal from an individual or profit by his 
mistake. They fail to see that real honesty will not per- 
mit us to steal from anyone. 

I have done business for many years with all kinds of 
boys — the lazy and the shiftless, the selfish and the care- 
less, those who have been thoughtless and those who have 
been dissipated and immoral. I can get on better with 
any one else than the liar. Truth is at the foundation of 
confidence; no business can be done satisfactorily with- 
out it; it is one of the cardinal principles of character. 
There is, of course, too, the half truth that is the worst 
sort of lie — the words which are themselves not false in 
their meaning, but which are so uttered as to convey false 
impression. 

Robey, whose allowance was quite adequate, had been 
very neglectful in the payment of some of his bills. I 
spoke to him about the matter, and he assured me he 
would take care of the bills at once. A month later I 
found that he was still owing on one of the old ac- 
counts. 

"I have written the check today," he said when I called 
him the second time. I said nothing more, because to my 
mind his statement meant that the bill was paid. I was 



146 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

very much surprised to find six weeks later that nothing 
had been done about the matter. 

"I'm afraid you did not tell me the truth," I said to 
Kobey when he came in response to my call. 

"I didn't tell you I'd paid the bill," he said in explana- 
tion, " I said I 'd written the check. I just didn 't send it." 

"But you meant me to think you had sent it, didn't 
you?" 

"I suppose so." 

And now Robey thinks it a trifle unfair when I hesitate 
to take his statements of fact without pretty careful analy- 
sis. 

Sometimes it is hard to tell the truth — especially when 
it involves some one else or reflects upon your own char- 
acter or conduct. There is, in my estimation at least, a 
generally prevalent false sense of honor which makes it 
wrong to tell the truth when the facts if known would not 
be creditable to some one else. I have never understood 
why. It is certainly not so in legal proceeding or in 
adult life. It demands unusual courage often to tell the 
truth especially when the consequences might be avoided. 

McDonald was waiting for me when I came into the of- 
fice one morning a short time ago. 

"I want to tell you something," he said. "It isn't 
creditable to me, and possibly you'll think when I'm 
through that I'm a pretty poor chap; but I want to get it 
off my mind. I've got to have my own self-respect if I'm 
to be happy." 



MANNERS AND MORALS 147 

Then he told me that when he had presented his cred- 
its from high school in the fall, the record had not been 
correct — he had been given credit for subjects which he 
had never taken, and, though he recognized the mistake, 
he had said nothing about it. Now he wanted the mat- 
ter straightened out, even if he were dismissed from col- 
lege. 

''What are you going to do to me?" he asked when 
he was through with his story — a story which he had told 
with much embarrassment. 

"We'll first have your high school record corrected," I 
said, "and then we'll forget all about the rest of the story. 
Only I want to say that you are a thousand times better 
and stronger boy for having told the truth." 

I said that many boys find it embarrassing and diffi- 
cult to tell the truth when the facts to be revealed are 
discreditable to some one else. I have no reference to 
trifling derelictions which are often a matter of personal 
opinion and which do not concern the well-being of the 
community, but to matters of real moral significance 
which vitally affect the interests of others. In the former 
case every sensible person would respect the boy who re- 
fused to say anything at all. What I have in mind con- 
cerns real immorality. 

There had been in our gymnasium considerable steal- 
ing of watches and money and clothing of all sorts. I was 
pretty well convinced who had done it and was trying to 
confirm my convictions. I was sure that Moore would 



148 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

be able to help me out if he would tell what he knew, and 
I called him. 

''I couldn't tell you about that/' he said, "I've been 
brought up to believe that it is not honorable to give an- 
other fellow away." 

"I respect the general principle," I admitted, "but 
this man is a thief who is living on the community and is 
robbing boys who will be forced to leave college if the 
thing continues." 

"That doesn't make any difference," Moore replied. 

Ultimately the real thief when he was caught (and he 
did prove to be the acquaintance of Moore whom I had 
suspected;) accused Moore of the theft, for any thief will 
lie in order to cover up his own dishonesties, and he is sel- 
dom discriminating in choosing the men whom he accuses. 

I have known many boys with the false standard of 
responsibility who held that it was wrong under any cir- 
cumstances to involve others than themselves in any dere- 
liction and who considered that they were doing a virtuous 
act when they lied to keep a guilty companion out of 
trouble. We are forced to change such standards as these 
when we become adult members of society, for the courts 
do not allow such a view point, but on the other hand hold 
that the good citizen is not only responsible for his own 
conduct but must exercise restraining influence upon his 
neighbor and inform on him if he is a law breaker. 

Every boy is under a moral obligation to work hard, to 
carry through what he begins whether or not it is agreeable 



MANNERS AND MORALS 149 

or interesting, to keep his promises even though the keep- 
ing be difficult or disagreeable. At home and in school 
we have become so accustomed to following the line of 
least resistance, to choosing for study only such subjects 
as we find easy or entertaining, to doing only those things 
which we like, that we balk when it comes to any hard or 
disagreeable work. 

Frank's teacher in astronomy reported that he was not 
going to class. Since he had signed up for the course and 
was under obligations to attend it unless released by the 
Dean, I called him to inquire the cause of his absence. 

"I don't care for it/' he said. **It's hard, it doesn't in- 
terest me and I just quit it. I don't see what good astron- 
omy is going to do me." 

He had no sense of obligation to carry through what he 
had begun, no pride whatsoever in his class record. He was 
looking for the snap, for something that in itself awakened 
his interest; he had no conception of the moral and in- 
tellectual benefits of hard work. 

There is no moral principle which is more fundamental 
for the high school boy to learn than that which has to do 
with the clean personal life. If the army taught anything, 
it taught us that. Every year I give to the freshmen who 
are just entering my own institution from high school a 
series of talks on personal hygiene including the dangers 
and physical effects of drinking and of bad sexual prac- 
tices. The thing that surprises me always is how little 
they know and how little of what they know is true. They 



150 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

have the most distorted ideas of a normal healthy sexual 
life and of the effects of sexual disease. If they follow im- 
moral or intemperate practices in college, in nine cases out 
of ten they have begun these practices long before they 
were ready for college, and have pitifully little conception 
of the ultimate dangers to character and health involved. 
A beginning in self-discipline should be made when im- 
pulses and imagination first lead a boy into untoward 
things, and this is at the beginning of high school rather 
than at the beginning of college. A boy's moral status is 
pretty well settled when he enters college. Someone 
should have laid down for him definite principles of per- 
sonal thinking and personal conduct. Some one should 
have had the courage and the tact to tell him frankly and 
straightforwardly of his physical being, of the sacredness 
of his body and the necessity of his keeping it morally 
clean. If this is not done in the high school, there is very 
little likelihood of its being done at home. 

A father sat in my office a few days ago talking about 
his freshman son. He had come in response to a letter 
from me. The boy was doing no good in college, his 
habits were bad, he was the victim of disease. I told the 
father the wretched unpleasant truth as gently as I could, 
and he seemed surprised, stunned. 

"But my boy has always been a good boy," he said. 
"How has it been possible for college to ruin him so 
quickly?" 

"You are mistaken," I answered. "Every experience 



MANNERS AND MORALS 151 

he has had in college he had tried before he came. If 
you think I am wrong ask him. " 

I knew I was right, for the boy had told me so, and he 
had told me also that neither at home nor in the high school 
had he been given any specific or friendly instruction as 
to the danger to his mind or to his body of the habits which 
he began early to form. 

''If you want us to live a clean life, to stand for the 
highest moral principles," one of my freshmen said to me 
not long ago, "don't wait until we get to college before 
you set before us the ideals we should follow; begin in 
high school before we have begun the practices which 
are sometimes almost impossible to give up." 

Every boy comes to the time when his moral principles 
are tested, when temptation stares him suddenly in the 
face, when he must prove to himself and to his friends 
whether these principles are a pretense or a reality. As 
their foundations were laid early, as they have been held to 
firmly and honestly they will stand, for the ultimate test 
of any boy's manners or morals is how successfully he will 
meet the unexpected social or moral crisis. 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 

I suppose that at one time or another in his life, every 
boy plans to be a street car conductor or a railroad en- 
gineer, or at least to follow some pursuit of an active me- 
chanical nature. Most boys like to see the wheels go 
round. As for me, I was determined to be a doctor. I im- 
agine I was led to this conclusion through watching 
Doctor Triplett who visited the sick in our country com- 
munity in his two wheeled sulky drawn by a rangy 
spirited gray horse. It seemed to me there would be more 
pleasure and less hard work in such a vocation than in 
any other with which I was familiar. I did not take into 
account the long dreary rides through the bitter cold of 
winter or the bottomless mud of early spring to visit 
people who never paid, perhaps. I saw only the pleasant 
side of it. 

As society is run now it is essential that every one have 
some business or profession by means of which he may eat 
and be clothed and have some recreation. Excepting that 
we are healthier and happier as a result of regular work, 
and that for most of us it is necessary to existence, I im- 
agine that most of us would not concern ourselves as much 
with work as we now do. I have never believed, and a long 
experience has not tended to change my opinion, that every 
young fellow is cut out for so definite and specific a job 

152 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 153 

that if he does not hit upon this particular position, he is 
ruined for Hfe. No more do I think that there is in the 
world somewhere for every man a particular woman, 
whom he must meet and win or be forever unhappy. Men 
are for the most part adaptable; they can as often as other- 
wise fit equally well into various positions or professions, 
and can find happiness with many sorts of people. A good 
lawyer might very easily have made an equally successful 
physician if he had gone into the latter profession with 
earnestness. 

There are in some people, however, peculiar weaknesses 
which are difiicult to strengthen; peculiar talents which 
fit them for particular work. Some people could be musi- 
cians or plumbers and Httle else. Such people should 
choose a profession thoughtfully and carefully. The less 
balanced and normal the brain, the less evenly developed 
one's powers are, the more one is a genius, the more nec- 
essary it is that one should get into the kind of work to 
which he is particularly adapted, or evade that which 
he would find impossible. If a boy is intending to study 
engineering he should have special ability and interest in 
mathematics; if he is to be a clergyman, he ought to have 
some leanings toward religion. A prospective surgeon 
should be adept in the use of his fingers, and anyone pro- 
posing to study law should be capable of logical reasoning. 

One can not always with certainty decide whether 
or not he has special fitness in one profession or another. 
A boy's father assured me not long since that he was 



154 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

convinced his son would make an excellent lawyer be- 
cause he was such a ready talker. If the ability to talk 
readily fitted one for the practice of law, women, some 
people think, would have a distressing handicap over 
men. Fluent speech is, of course, often a help to a lawyer 
if it is accompanied by other talents, but fluent speech 
which is not induced by logical reasoning and an accu- 
rate knowledge of law may as likely as not be a handicap 
instead of an asset to a man attempting to practice law. 
Lawyers have been known to lose their cases by not know- 
ing when to stop talking. Again parents frequently assure 
me that their young sons have unusual fitness for engi- 
neering work because, perhaps, they have constructed 
an electric motor, or made a water wheel, or fixed a 
refractory lawn mower. Such mechanical ability is often 
an aid to engineering work, but it is in no way an abso- 
lute necessity or a manifestation of engineering genius. 
It suggests the mechanic rather than the engineer. 

So far as it is possible, however, one should find out 
whatever special fitness he may have for any one work 
and devote himself to that. Teachers can help in this 
decision; parents should recognize the talents of their 
children and try to make the most of them; the boy 
himself should analyze his own special fitness. I have 
never been sure as to just how accurately the average 
man can judge of his own individual ability. A shrewd 
executive whom I once knew used to say that when a 
young man confessed to more than ordinary skill in any 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 155 

one direction or thought himself especially fitted for a 
particular type of work, it was rather conclusive evidence 
that he might better take up some other. However 
that may be, I have seldom in teaching English compo- 
sition, found that the man who laid claim to any particular 
skill in writing actually possessed much. Accurate self- 
judgment is difficult, but too much self-assurance is often 
an evidence of weakness. 

Granted that a boy has unusual mental gifts; a peculiar 
danger often confronts him — the danger of depending 
upon his unusual ability to carry him through without 
work. It is an old saying that the only genius worth 
much is the genius for hard work. I have known a few 
geniuses, but I do not now recall more than one or two 
who got far in the professions which they adopted, 
because very few of them were willing to work regularly 
or seriously. Knowing their ability, they grew to depend 
upon it to carry them through at the last moment with- 
out any regular hard labor on their part; not willing to 
work hard and regularly, they did not increase their 
power; they were no more able to accomplish results 
at the end of ten years of practice than at the beginning 
of their careers. 

''Can't I come back next September,'^ a freshman 
who had failed asked me, "and start all over again as 
if nothing had happened? " 

It was hard for him to see that a year of loafing had 
had an effect on him which could not be eliminated by 



156 • THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

forgetting the past. Powers that are not increased wane; 
the mind will not stand still in its development. 

If you are taking up any work or profession it is wisest 
to understand beforehand what it involves. Read books on 
the subject; if you are thinking of engineering or medicine 
or law, get hold of some successful engineer or doctor or 
lawyer and ask him about the training necessary to suc- 
cess in his profession and the difficulties incident to it. 
He will probably advise you to try some other profession. 
He will enlarge on the difficulties, no doubt, of his own 
particular calling, but this fact need not serve to dis- 
courage you. You will find often that what on the surface 
seemed easy sailing has been a hazardous voyage full of 
storms and often suggestive of shipwreck. Men will 
ftdvise you to keep out of the profession which they are 
following, because knowing as intimately as they do 
the hardships of their own calling, and being acquainted 
only with the externals of others, they imagine their 
own to be the most difficult and wearing and unsatis- 
factory of all. Fathers especially are loath to seeing 
their sons take up the line of work in which they them- 
selves have become established and have succeeded. 

"I don't want my son to take up my profession," 
I hear scores of fathers say. ''There is nothing in it but 
hard work." 

So, too, men who have come up to affluence through 
sacrifice and toil, say, ''I never want my son to go through 
what I have gone through," not realizing that what 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 157 

they went through gave them the strength and the suc- 
cess which they attained. 

There is always the misleading suggestion by these 
men that in any other profession but their own efficiency 
and success are attained without labor, ^nd that hard 
labor is if possible to be avoided, while the truth of the 
matter is that no one is likely to get far in any sort of 
business without persistent, steady, hard work. Don't 
be discouraged because your proposed profession in- 
volves hard work. 

There is often a considerable advantage to a boy 
in choosing to carry on the business which his father 
has followed. His unconscious observation of the details 
of his father's business gives him a handicap over another 
man going into the same business wholly without ex- 
perience. He is likely to know more about his father's 
business than any other. The counsel and advice which 
the older man could give the younger should never be 
disregarded, and the ready opening which the younger 
man might find in his father's profession or establish- 
ment when his education is completed should not be 
undervalued. The fact that such a man will be prepared 
for the difficulties and the discouragements of his pro- 
fession, and will not be surprised or caught unawares 
by them will contribute somewhat to his success. There 
is more independence, of course, in starting out alone, 
and most boys like so far as possible to feel that they 
are under obligation to no one, and have been the cause 



158 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

of their own success. It is better, however, to be a good 
farmer on the old home place than it is to be a second- 
rate engineer on your own account. 

It is usually a mistake to let some one else make the 
choice for you, even if the person who offers to do so or 
who insists upon doing so is your father or mother. I 
know parents who select the professions for their chil- 
dren and map out in minute detail the line of education 
each one is to follow, and who have everything all settled, 
perhaps, even before the child is born. It is a process 
which more often than otherwise results in a lack of en- 
thusiasm if not in failure on the part of the child. I can 
at this time recall only one young fellow whose father, 
contrary to the boy's own desires, picked out a profession 
for his son, who ever accomplished much that was worth 
while in the work he undertook. It is about as safe to 
allow some one else to select for you the girl you are to 
marry as it is to let him, without regard to your interests 
and desires, pick out for you your life work. The choice 
ought to be your own. 

Chilton, stumbling through his sophomore year in col- 
lege, had been making a sad failure; he showed no enthusi- 
asm, no interest, no energy in the work for which he was 
registered. 

''Why are you taking engineering?" I asked. "You 
don't like mathematics, and mechanics is a closed book 
to you." 

''Well, I never wanted to do it," he replied. " I really 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 159 

wanted to go into business, but father insisted on my 
studying engineering because he thought it offered the 
best opportunities to a young fellow of anything going, 
and because Uncle John is in a position to give me a job 
and a good start when I have graduated. " 

Chilton will never make an engineer no matter how hard 
his father sets his jaw and no matter how good a job his 
Uncle John has waiting for him, because he hasn't a math- 
ematical brain, he doesn't like engineering, and he has not 
learned to do anything well which he doesn't like. 

This leads me to say that there is probably no more 
foolish practice than to choose a business or a profession 
purely because in itself it seems to offer peculiar oppor- 
tunities or attractions. All through the summer following 
their graduation from high school, boys come to see me or 
write to me concerning their entrance to college. 

*' What do you think is a good course for a fellow to take 
up? " they ask me, with the idea in mind that there must 
be some work par excellence in itself, regardless of the indi- 
vidual or of his attitude toward his work. They do not see 
that it is the man and not the profession that brings about 
success. They argue that because electricity is the coming 
motive power, electrical engineering is really the only 
course to pursue if they are going to college, or possibly 
that because chemistry has played such a wonderful part 
in the war and will play an even more wonderful part in the 
reconstruction which follows the war, chemistry is an un- 
usually good field for a boy to enter. They are, no 



160 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

doubt, correct in supposing that chemistry and electricity 
will be more generally than ever put to practical use in the 
coming years, but no course is in itself a good course, and 
no line of work offers special opportunities unless the 
men who pursue them show special fitness. 

There was a letter in my mail only a few days ago from 
a young fellow just graduated from high school, who, with- 
out money, was considering the possibiUty of going to 
college. 

''I should like to know," he wrote, "just what special 
inducements your University will offer me in the way of a 
chance to earn my living. I want to go to college, and I 
am intending to choose the college which will make me the 
most attractive offer and the course which suggests the 
greatest future." He mentioned no special fitness, no tal- 
ents or training or experience which should give him pref- 
erence or precedence over other boys. 

I replied that he was looking at the matter from the 
wrong angle. The college welcomes the boy who has most 
ability, who can do something better than common, who 
has special fitness for a definite job, and such a boy can get 
a job almost anywhere he goes. It is in such a way as this 
young fellow was looking at his job in college that some 
men regard a profession. They are willing to sell them- 
selves to the profession which bids the highest, not realiz- 
ing that it is their own personal qualities and interest 
which determine whether or not the job is worth while. 
I am convinced that many of the failures which young 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 161 

fellows meet in all lines of business and especially in techni- 
cal courses in college come largely from the fact that men 
have gone into them not because of any special fitness or 
of any special interest in the work or liking for it, but be- 
cause they felt that the particular business or profession 
which they were taking up offered an easy and sure ap- 
proach to success. 

In choosing a profession one ought to be willing to reach 
success slowly and by reasonable stages. 

Cowan did well in high school and college. He was not 
afraid of work, he showed enthusiasm, and he was de- 
pendable. His character was above reproach, and his per- 
sonality was unusually attractive. I used often to marvel 
at the ease with which he met people, the rapidity with 
which he made friends, and the facility with which he dis- 
patched business; but yet he did not get on. He tried life 
insurance but gave it up at the end of a few months; he 
took up the real estate business; he was a traveling sales- 
man for a tractor company; he went in with a reputable 
manufacturing concern; but he did not stick long. He 
drifted from one thing to another, and at the end of ten 
years he had got nowhere; yet everyone admitted his 
ability. 

The real cause of his failure was that Cowan wanted 
to succeed at a bound; he was looking for something that 
would make him rich or famous or independent in a short 
time. He was not willing to go through the long period 
of servitude and drudgery that practically every success- 



162 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

ful or professional or business man has found necessary 
before he reached the goal of his ambitions. So he rushed 
from one rainbow end to another in a vain endeavor to 
find the pot of gold without digging for it. 

Two friends of mine, a steady, successful, middle-aged 
couple, were stopping for a time at a high-priced hotel in 
the Allegheny mountains. 

"Isn't it strange," Mrs. Granger said to her husband, 
" how few young people there are here. Almost everyone 
is middle-aged or past it." 

''That's easy," her husband responded. "A man has to 
be forty-five before he has made enough money to afford 
to come here." 

It is a hard lesson for a boy to learn that in any pro- 
fession or business that is worth while success comes 
slowly. Persistence is necessary; faithfulness, courage 
and willingness to wait for results. It is the hardest, after 
all, for a boy to learn to wait, for him to realize that the 
profession or business that promises immediate success is 
frequently, like the skilfully gilded brick, a thing to be 
wary of. 

One should not choose a profession in which he has no 
special interest and for the work of which he has 
no liking. A month or two ago a high school senior 
from a neighboring state brought to me a letter of in- 
troduction from a former student of mine with the re- 
quest that I should give the boy advice as to the choice of 
his profession. The young fellow seemed normal in every 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 163 

way. His course in high school had been well balanced 
and was made up of mathematics, and language, and sci- 
ence varied enough to test his ability. He had done one 
thing about as well as another. It did seem, however, 
that he had rather unusual talents in music. The his- 
tory of his family on both his father's and mother's side 
showed musical appreciation and technical skill. He was 
himself a more than ordinarily skilful pianist. It was my 
friend's opinion that the boy ought to study music and 
prepare himself to become a professional musician rather 
than to take scientific or technical work. I talked with 
him for some time to get his reactions. 

''What do you want to do?" I finally asked him. 

''I'd rather be a chemical engineer than anything else 
in the world," was his reply. "I'd be willing to work my 
head off, if I could get a chance to study chemistry.'^ 

His point of view is the only safe guide to the solution 
of the problem of choosing a profession. Interest, desire, 
the willingness to work at a thing because one likes it — that 
is the test which every boy should apply to himself when 
he is making the choice of the work which he is to take up 
for life. Every business, every profession is full of men 
who are working because they have to do so and not be- 
cause they want to do so, who drag themselves to their 
tasks with lagging steps and unenthusiastic spirits. The 
most favored positions in fife are full of difficulties. Every 
position and every profession has its trials and its hard 
problems that will test the courage and try the temper of 



164 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

the best of men. Unless one likes his work, unless he can 
show interest and enthusiasm in it, his lot is a sad one. 
One should choose for his life work something in which he 
will find pleasure, he should go to it every morning with 
delight and should leave it with something like regret. 
Otherwise there will be for him constant grumbling, un- 
rest and discontent. 

It is easy to find illustrations of the fact that interest 
and enthusiasm will work wonders. Not many years ago 
a young fellow from a country town in the middle west 
applied for admission to one of our middle west educa- 
tional institutions. He had had no high school training, 
and the admission requirements of the institution were 
severe. He was past twenty-one years of age, however, 
so that he was admitted on trial as a special student and 
allowed to attempt to carry the regular work of the fresh- 
man year of the course in which he was interested. It 
was his greatest pleasure to have a chance to study the 
subjects which he liked, and he carried that same inter- 
est and enthusiasm to all other subjects which he at- 
tempted or which he was required to take. During his 
leisure hours he devoted himself to the high school work 
which he had missed as a boy, passed it off by examin- 
ation, and at the end of four years and a half he gradu- 
ated as an honor student. 

No one ever thought that he had a brilliant mind; 
he had interest and he was willing to work. If such a 
man as he without adequate preparation, and with 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 165 

only average brains, could through desire and interest 
mainly, accomplish such gratifying results, what could 
a thoroughly well-prepared man not do? And what is 
true of one sort of work is true of another. It is the 
man who is working because he enjoys it who throws 
his whole soul into what he is doing and who can not 
be excelled or defeated. It is the men who have no 
enthusiasms, and who can^t get down to work, who are 
always in doubt as to whether or not they have chosen 
correctly, and who seldom succeed. The young fellow who 
knows what he wants to do and is willing and eager to 
do whatever is necessary to accomplish his purposes is 
a long way toward success. The man who doesn't know 
his own mind, who is waiting for someone to pick out 
for him a good job, or to set him up in a successful busi- 
ness, has little chance of getting anywhere. 

Men say sometimes that the thing they would like 
most to do requires so much preparation before they are 
ready to go on with it, that they can not afford the time 
or the money required to fit them to begin. They would 
like to be lawyers or physicians or preachers or architects 
or whatever it may be, but to be a well-prepared phy- 
sician requires seven or eight years of study and prepara- 
tion not to speak of the sum of money to be expended, 
and they feel that they will be half through life before 
they are ready to take up its duties. Men excuse them- 
selves for not finishing a college course which they have 
begun, on the ground that they have found a good open- 



166 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

ing or have been offered an unusually attractive position 
and they fear that if they wait to complete their education 
all the good jobs will be gone. Opportunity knocks 
but once, they say, and they are convinced that he is 
now at their door. 

Over against these facts, however, are others. No one 
has ever been heard to regret, no matter what sort of 
business or profession he is in, that his preparation was 
too carefully made, that he put in too much time or too 
much money on his preliminary education, or did too much 
studying before he began. On the other hand, there are 
illustrations without number of men who bemoan the 
fact all their lives that they gave too little time to prep- 
aration and that they made their greatest mistake in 
not finishing their education. Illustrations innumerable 
can be found, also, of men who even in middle life got 
into the professions for which a delayed preparation 
had been made and who have more than made good. 

The boy or the young man, therefore, who hesitates 
about taking up the profession or the business which 
he likes best because of the time or the money neces- 
sary, to prepare for it, or the man who rushes into work 
ill prepared because he is afraid all the good jobs will 
be gone if he waits, is making a serious mistake. It is 
far better to take up a profession we like even late in 
life than it is to drag out a dull existence in doing the 
things mechanically which fail to bring out our best efforts. 
It is better to finish one's preparations as thoroughly 



CHOOSING A PROFESSION 167 

as possible and trust to the fact that there are always 
good jobs for the man who is fitted to hold them. 

Fitness, interest, enthusiasm, willingness to work, 
thorough preparation — these are the vital things to be 
considered by any young fellow in the choice of a profes- 
sion. 



GOING TO COLLEGE 

I am convinced that far too many boys go to college. 
It is not that I undervalue the worth of a college educa- 
tion — ^far from it — ^but too many fellows go who have 
no appreciation of what a college education means, no 
special interest, no impelling motive, no desire for what 
college gives. When I entered college, it was a great 
event in our country community for a boy to break away 
from his environment and go off to a higher institution 
of learning; the neighbors all turned out to see me off. 
Now everybody goes; it is as common a thing for a boy 
to go to college as it is for him to take a summer vacation. 
I often ask the young fellows in our freshman class who 
come in to see me why they are in college, but I seldom 
get a very thoughtful or a very specific answer. 

I asked Parker the other day. He is a boy of good 
brains and attractive physique. He has plenty of money, 
and every chance to do well, but his work is ragged and 
commonplace, he gets no pleasure out of books, he has 
no enthusiasm for study; he is quite as likely to fail as 
to pass when the test of final examinations comes. 

''It wasn't because I wanted to come," was his reply. 
"My brother George finished here two years ago, and 
he wanted me to come. Father would have been disap- 
pointed if I had not done so, so what was I to do?" 

168 



GOING TO COLLEGE 169 

He showed about as much animation and pleasure 
as a young fellow might do who was taking a dose of 
cod liver oil to please his grandmother. 

Down the street a block or so was another boy to whom 
his college course is a source of constant joy. He has been 
an orphan for many years, he has no resources but those 
which come from the labor of his own hands. Ever since 
he was a small boy he had looked forward to being in col- 
lege as one of the hoped-for but nearly impossible things. 
It was to him like a dream of fairy-land not likely to come 
true. 

He worked his way through high school, he got a good 
job the following summer, he won a scholarship by ex- 
amination, and then he began to feel that possibly his 
dream might be realized. He is in college now, and he 
finds it all a delight. He has no money and few pleasures, 
but he is full of enthusiasm, he laughs at the sacrifices 
he must make, he counts it a privilege to be able to pursue 
the subjects which he enjoys, and he knows very well 
why he came to college. His four years in college will 
be full of hard toil, but they will bring him constant and 
keen pleasure. 

Too many boys go to college for the same reason that 
scores of fellows went into the army in 1917 — it is the 
easiest thing to do; it is the thing which a large number 
of his friends are doing. To others it seems more attrac- 
tive, perhaps, and more likely to result in a hilariously 
good time than going to work. There is a generally 



170 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

accepted belief extant, also, that the man who goes to 
college is likely in some way to have an easier time than 
the fellow who does not do so. No one seems to ap- 
preciate the fact that the man who secures an edu- 
cation is also sure to fall heir to pretty heavy responsi- 
bilities. 

Now why should a boy go to college? Not to any 
large extent because other fellows are doing so, though 
of course, custom is not a thing to be wholly ignored 
even in following educational practices; not so much as 
most people think to acquire information or to acquaint 
oneself with facts, though the accumulation of facts is 
a necessary detail in any system of education. More 
than for anything else, one should go to college for the 
symmetrical training of the mind, for the learning of 
self-control, for the disciplining of all the faculties, for 
the development of ideals. 

I studied calculus and conic sections while I was in 
college; I pored over Anglo Saxon texts, and spent a 
considerable time in the chemical laboratory working 
out experiments and developing formulas. Most of 
these things I have forgotten, and few if any of them 
have I had any occasion to use in the routine business 
which has engaged my attention since I left college. I 
do not for this reason, however, in any way underesti- 
mate the permanent value of these subjects to me. They 
developed my brain, they caused me to think, they helped 
me to draw conclusions quickly and gave me a broader 



GOING TO COLLEGE 171 

and clearer outlook on life, and these powers have 
helped me every day of my life since, in every relation 
which I have borne to my fellow men. It is seldom that 
I have needed the specific information which I derived 
from these subjects, but all through the years I have 
depended upon the training which I thus received. It 
is this training and discipline which in my mind is the 
most valuable thing the college gives. 

There are several sorts of men who should not go to 
college. The man who does not like to study, who finds 
no real pleasure in books, to whom the incidental things 
of college are the main consideration, has little business 
in college. I was talking to Rogers about his work this 
quarter. He is doing poorly, he can not get up in the 
morning, he finds class attendance irksome, and books 
and study bore him. 

**If I can not make the ball team," he confessed to 
me, "there is little use of my staying in college. I'd a lot 
rather hold down the second sack than be elected to Phi 
Beta Kappa." 

The facts are, however, that there's a slim chance of his 
attaining either distinction, for he will not be allowed to 
play ball at all if he doesn't carry his studies, and the 
likelihood of his making Phi Beta Kappa is about as re- 
mote as the establishment of an aeroplane route to Mars. 

"You'd better apply for admission to one of the minor 
leagues," I advised him, "college is no place for you." 

There are those who look upon college as a kind of 



172 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

resting place between youth and manhood where one forms 
associations only, or absorbs a few facts or a little culture. 
They do not for a moment consider it a place where a 
young fellow should get down to business and work hard, 
but rather a place of leisure, or recreation, a place to 
dream and smoke, and sleep late in the morning, and talk 
nonsense to pretty girls while one is waiting for the real 
work of life to begin. It is this sort of man who yawns or 
turns up his nose when the subject of scholarship is intro- 
duced. He doesn't want to get high grades, not he. He 
is going to have to go to work quite soon enough, he de- 
clares, so why spoil the best years of one's life by digging. 
Peters was that sort. He could prove by statistics 
gathered from all kinds of, to him at least, reliable sources 
that the commonplace man in his studies in college always 
develops later into a captain of finance or a world leader. 
He spent most of his time cultivating an effective shot at 
billiards or sitting in front of the fire smoking cigarettes 
and outlining to the other fellows who would listen to him 
the business and social conquests he expected to make 
when his college career should close. Unfortunately it 
closed somewhat sooner than he anticipated, for the fac- 
ulty took another view of things than that held by Peters, 
and dropped him at the end of his sophomore year for 
poor scholarship. Peters is only one of the many illustra- 
tions I have known of the fact that there isn't much place 
in college for the loafer, or for the man who is trying only 
to pick up a little social experience or to acquire a little 



GOING TO COLLEGE 173 

intellectual polish without labor, before he gets into the 
real hustle of life. 

There are a few boys undoubtedly who finish high school 
whose mental equipment is not quite adequate to the work 
of college, who are not natural students, who are better 
fitted for a trade than for a profession, and who would 
seldom have had their minds turned toward a college 
course were it not for the fact that so many of their mates 
were continuing their education beyond the high school. 
The number of these is not large, possibly, but it is sufii- 
ciently in evidence for a boy seriously to ask himself the 
question, "Am I mentally fitted to take up a college 
course?" 

A good many boys can not afford to go to college. Some- 
times home duties are arduous and can not be shirked, 
and though, if he followed his own personal desires, he 
would go on with his education, he realizes that he is 
under obligation to make the sacrifice. Sometimes the 
boy could get away, but there is no money available. The 
old theory was that any boy who had the desire for an 
education could always meet his college expenses in some 
way through manual labor. In fact there are many other- 
wise sensible people still who imagine that the self-sup- 
porting student in college is not only better off than other 
boys but is always near the head of the class. I have even 
known fathers who were quite able to pay the expenses 
of their sons in college who refused to do so because they 
exaggerated and idealized the intellectual advantages of 



174 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

being poor. There is always to substantiate their theory, 
the story of Webster setting off to Dartmouth with his 
one pair of homespun trousers — later ruined by the rain — 
and a bag of potatoes for his subsistence. They do not 
suspect how much pain and suffering he would have been 
spared, how much better he might have done, had he been 
properly clothed and decently fed. 

The real facts, are that the self-supporting student in 
college misses a tremendous lot usually of what one should 
get from college, and in a good many instances fails en- 
tirely. 

"I know absolutely nothing of what real college life 
is," a junior said to me only a few days ago. " I've earned 
my own living ever since I entered, and I've had my nose 
on the grindstone ever since I struck the campus. I some- 
times wonder if it pays." 

Such a student picks up an inadequate living, and he 
sometimes falls down on his final examinations. The rea- 
son is perfectly evident. The college course, if it is well 
carried, requires the most of a man's time. The self- 
supporting student is attempting two tasks either of which 
have ordinarily been considered sufficient to occupy a 
man's whole time and energy. 

There is also extant another notion to the effect that in 
a college town it is easier to live on nothing or to pick up a 
good job than in any other place. Many a young fellow 
gravitates to a college town thinking he can get work there 
more readily than in any other place. Quite the contrary 



GOING TO COLLEGE 175 

is true. The average college town is the most expensive 
place to live one can find, and the fact that there are al- 
ways hundreds of young fellows hunting for something to 
do to eke out an inadequate income, makes the oppor- 
tunity for lucrative employment quite uncertain. 

There are men, of course, in every college who earn all 
their living and who do well in their studies, but their num- 
ber is small. Such men usually have some peculiar talent, 
such as the ability to play a musical instrument well, 
for instance, which enables them to earn a considerable 
amount of money in brief periods of time. I have spoken 
to a boy since I began to write this article who is earn- 
ing his expenses through college, and he tells me that 
during the past week he has earned $39.00 by playing the 
piano in an orchestra for four evenings. There are not 
many like him, however. 

The man who works his way in college must have 
concentration and a quick, alert mind which will enable 
him to get his lessons in a short time. He must be re- 
sourceful, and let his head help his hands in earning his 
living. He must be physically strong and robust, for often 
he will need to get on for a time on less sleep than the aver- 
age man, or his sleeping hours, at least, will be interrupted 
or irregular. He will have to be capable of sacrifice, for 
the man without money can have few of the social pleas- 
ures which fill so much of the leisure time of the college 
man. He can never afford to be an athlete, for participa- 
tion in athletics will take up all his leisure time and leave 



176 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

him no opportunity to earn his living. He should not be 
too sensitive or given to despondent spells, for his work 
will not always be pleasant or to his liking. He will often 
have to wait on his inferiors and say nothing when they 
treat him with condescension. I should never advise a 
boy to attempt to earn his living in college if he does not 
have to do so; often I think it is better to delay en- 
trance to college until a respectable sum has been saved, 
and sometimes I am sure it is better not to go to college at 
all than to make the sacrifices and to do the worse than 
commonplace work which many self-supporting students 
find it impossible to avoid. I should rather enter college 
at twenty-two and do good work than to graduate at the 
same age and leave behind me a record that was not to 
my credit. 

The boy who is always looking for practical things, who 
does not want to study anything that fails to reveal at 
once its practical application or its immediate availability 
as a money getter, is better off usually out of college than 
in. I see such men every day. They are never able to 
"see any use" in Latin, or philosophy, or literature; they 
are constantly objecting because certain courses in which 
they are registered are not what they thought they would 
be; they are not getting anything out of them, they say, 
quite likely because they are putting less into them them- 
selves. Such men see very little in a college course, and 
for them in fact there probably is little, for though the 
college man is very likely to earn money more readily 



GOING TO COLLEGE 177 

because of his college training than other men, the fellow 
who goes to college solely because he thinks it will prove 
the readiest means to an easy and profitable job, might 
better stay at home. 

The choice of a college is a subject which should be 
given some attention. The question is one often decided 
by sentiment, by prejudice, from practical considerations 
and from a thousand and one things sometimes trifling in 
themselves. The boy who goes to college in his home town 
is usually making a mistake. The only advantage such a 
young fellow derives is a financial one. It is generally 
cheaper to live at home than away from home, and, when 
the matter of finances is a vital one, it is better for a boy 
to go to college in his home town than not to go at all. 
I have never, except for financial reasons, advised any 
parents to move to a college town in order that they might 
look after and care for their sons while they were under- 
graduates in college, and I do not now recall the names of 
any sons who were strengthened by having their parents 
with them during the college course. 

The boy living at home is usually less independent, less 
aggressive, possesses less initiative than the one who is 
thrown out upon his own resources to fight his own bat- 
tles, to meet his own temptations, and to settle his own 
difiiculties. The college practically always throws about 
him sufiicient restraint to keep him from going on the 
rocks, and yet leaves him free enough to develop in- 
dependence. If he is at home, his father, or especially his 



17S THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

mother, undertakes to decide for him in most critical emer- 
gencies and, though the judgment of the older person is 
likely to be more dependable than that of the younger, 
there is no training for the boy in depending upon his 
elders^ judgment. 

The boy from the west will often gain an advantage by 
going to an eastern institution for his education. Not that 
he will be better taught there, or live in a more refined or a 
rarer intellectual atmosphere, but because he will meet 
different sorts of people, he will need to adjust him- 
self to quite different conditions from those to which he 
has been used, and he will get a broader outlook upon life. 
Such an experience will not be at all likely to make him 
dissatisfied with his own particular part of the country, 
but on the contrary will cause him to value it more highly. 
When I go to the mountains I always come back to the 
prairies with a sense of joy and satisfaction. 

For this reason the New Englander or the Southerner 
would often be immeasurably benefited by taking his 
college training in the west. It would modify his provin- 
cialism, it would disabuse his mind of the idea that the 
most of the United States lies east of the Hudson river 
or south of Mason and Dixon's line, it would humanize 
him and teach him democracy, and, best of all, if he chooses 
his college wisely, it would give him as excellent a training 
as he could get anywhere else in the country, and often at 
considerably less expense. 

Each college has its own traditions, its own atmosphere, 



GOING TO COLLEGE 179 

its own ideals and character. It is well worth while look- 
ing into these things in choosing a college. It is almost as 
necessary to avoid incompatibility of tastes in choosing 
a college as it is in choosing a wife. There is the conserva- 
tive college and the liberal; the college in a country 
town and the country town about a college; there is the 
college in a city and the college near one. Whether one 
likes one sort of situation or another depends very much 
upon the individual himself. 

The subject of the large institution versus the small one 
has been much discussed. I have been a student in a 
large institution where I knew nobody and where nobody 
had the slightest curiosity or desire to know me; I have 
been a teacher in a small institution which grew during 
my term of service to one of the largest universities in the 
country. Each type of college has its own advantages. 

The main argument in support of the small college as 
opposed to the big university is about the same as that 
offered in defense of the country town as contrasted with 
the city. The small college is more democratic, perhaps. 
Students in it come more closely into touch with the older 
members of the faculty and with each other. The number 
of extra-curriculum activities does not vary materially 
from those in the larger institution, and, since the enroll- 
ment of students is small, the competition for student 
honors is very much less keen. While in a big institution 
there might easily be one thousand students in the senior 
or junior class, in the small college there would not be one 



180 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

tenth as many. There is more chance, therefore, in the 
small college for the shy, unaggressive, conmaonplace man 
to gain prominence than in the larger one. There is, per- 
haps, more general comradeship, brotherly feeling, the life 
is more like home life, though the number of men whom 
one can know in a small college is not greater if so great as 
is possible in a big university outside of a great city. 

The larger institution makes the stronger appeal to the 
man with initiative because it offers to him greater pos- 
sibilities. To be manager or editor of a great college 
daily, to be captain of an athletic team whose vic- 
tories are heralded from New York to San Francisco, to 
be president of a student organization in which there are 
five thousand votes to be considered, makes a strong ap- 
peal to the ambitious student. The opportunity, too, to 
touch elbows with men from all over the world, such men 
as one finds in a big university, is no small matter. The 
student in any large American university has a chance to 
know men from almost every civilized country in the 
world. The variety of interests, also, in the big institution 
is worth considering. I count it as one of the most valuable 
experiences of my college course, that though I was pri- 
marily interested in languages and literature while I was 
an undergraduate, yet I had daily associations with en- 
gineers and chemists, with prep-medics and mathemati- 
cians, and that, without consciously doing so, I acquired a 
considerable body of information and grew interested in 
a thousand incidental things through this association. One 



GOING TO COLLEGE 181 

is more alone in a big institution, one has more freedom, 
one must more often fight single-handed one's own battles. 
There is more chance of being lost in the crowd and more 
honor if one rises above it. 

One would suppose, if he did not know otherwise, that 
a freshman in college barring the matter of a few months 
difference in age, is quite similar to a senior in high school, 
but whoever assumed such a premise would be far from 
the truth. One can always tell a freshman at college, just 
as, with few exceptions, one can tell an American college 
man when he sees him whether in Duluth or Singa- 
pore. The freshman may be as self-possessed as possible; 
he may dress as he chooses; he may ask no foolish questions 
or show no lack of familiarity with the college customs; but 
he is a marked man the moment he sets foot on the campus. 
Whether he comes from South Hadley, Massachusetts, or 
a country town in Kansas with one general store and a 
post office, it makes little difference, he can not conceal 
the fact that he is a newcomer beginning his experi- 
ence in college. He is like the American in Paris, or Rot- 
terdam, who thinks that if he does not speak no one will 
know him for a foreigner, but who is spotted a block away 
by every small boy, and fakir, on the street. 

No one knows how he tells a freshman — it is probably 
a matter of intuition. But the freshman learns rapidly 
to adapt himself to the new situation; he picks up at once 
the ways of the campus; by Thanksgiving he seems Hke 
an old settler, and by the end of the year he is ready to 



182 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

meet incoming freshmen with unerring recognition and 
condescension. Sometimes he adapts himself too incom- 
pletely to his new environment. It is as much a fault to 
cling rigidly to one's home manners and habits and dress 
as it is to throw these to the winds and adopt the ex- 
tremes of college customs and fads. In the unimportant 
things of college life it is well for the freshman to keep his 
eyes open and to ''do as the Romans do"; it is not wise 
for him, however, on his return home at Thanksgiving to 
attempt to reproduce and to establish the customs of 
Rome in his home community. 

The differences between high school and college are 
marked. The methods of work and the ways of living are 
quite different from those in high school — quite different 
in fact, from what the boy thinks they are. It is not sur- 
prising that a high school boy's idea of college life is an 
erroneous one. What he knows of college he has most 
frequently gained from the exaggerated accounts of stu- 
dent escapades which he has seen in the newspapers, or 
from the stories which he has heard related by his big 
brother or a local athlete who has returned home from the 
scenes of his scholastic triumphs. Such tales are usually 
unhampered by facts, and concern themselves more with 
the unusual and the unimportant things of college than 
with its real work. If he has visited college at all it has 
more than likely been at the time of an important athletic 
contest, or of an interscholastic meet, when nobody works, 
or talks of work, and when the main thing under consider- 



GOING TO COLLEGE 183 

ation is the athletic victory, and perhaps the celebration 
which follows. As he saw college then, it was a collection 
of carefree young fellows with little to do but to enjoy 
themselves, and perhaps occasionally, if nothing more im- 
portant prevented, to attend a few lectures. In point of 
fact college life is a strenuous life, where every man should 
be about his own business seriously and continuously. If 
one is to get on well in college, or in life for that matter, 
the sooner one recognizes this fact and adapts himself to 
the situation the better. Failure in college comes from 
a failure to recognize the fact that the aims of the college 
are different from thovse of the high school, that the 
amount of work required is greater, and that the methods 
of doing it must, also, be different. A man must adjust 
himself to these changed conditions if he would get on. 

The high school boy has seldom worked independently. 
He knew that if his work were not done when it should 
be, his teacher would remind him of the fact. When he 
was in difficulty there was some one to get him out. What- 
ever he did, or thought, was somewhat under the super- 
vision of someone older or more experienced than him- 
self. He judged of his success, or his progress, by what 
these people said of him or to him. In college it is different. 
Everyone must look after himself; much of his training 
consists in his doing so. If he doesn't hustle, no one is 
likely at once to call his attention to the fact. 

The problem of living has not materially concerned a 
freshman before he comes to college. He has lived at 



184 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

home, and his comings and goings have been under the 
direction of the older members of the household. Most 
of his wants have been provided for without much thought 
or attention on his part. Mother has darned his stockings 
and picked out his neckties, and father has paid the bills. 
This matter of paying the bills is not to be ignored. The 
college man will get on more happily, he will more readily 
learn business methods, and he will live comfortably on 
a smaller amount if he has a stipulated monthly allow- 
ance. It ought to be sufficient to enable him to live com- 
fortably, and it ought not to be so much as to necessitate 
wasting his time in order to spend it. The most discon- 
tetited students about college and those who give college 
officers most concern are the students who have too little 
money to spend and those who have too much. 

The habits of the boy going to college are as much the 
result of the conventions and customs of the community 
in which he has been brought up as of his own tendencies 
or inclinations. If he learned to dance it was because all 
the fellows did, if he went to church regularly, that was 
no necessary indication that he was religiously inclined; 
it was simply the custom. When he needed anything he 
asked for it without knowing much as to what it cost or 
where it came from. His comings and goings were some- 
what supervised. 

At college when his study program is decided upon, the 
disposal of his time is largely in his own hands. He may 
study one thing or another, or he need not study at all. 



GOING TO COLLEGE 185 

He may read in the library, or walk down town, or watch 
the team practicing on the athletic field; there is no one to 
call him to account. If he attends regularly upon classes, 
and shows a reasonable intelligence regarding his studies, 
he may employ his time as he pleases. He may choose 
his own companions, and act with absolute independ- 
ence. There is a delightful freedom in all this which 
is sometimes deceiving. He may assume that since no 
one calls him to account today there will be no reckoning 
tomorrow, but in this he is mistaken, for he is in reality 
being looked after pretty carefully. His time is his own, 
but it is his own to use wisely, and if he fails in this regard, 
he will suffer in the final reckoning, and that reckoning 
comes all too soon. 

On entering college every freshman will have some 
definite problems to face in a more personal way than 
they have ever before been presented to him. In most 
cases he has previously been familiar more or less closely 
with all the temptations which are to be found in college, 
but at home he has often been shielded from them — they 
have been more a name than a reality to him. Sooner or 
later every man must meet temptation face to face and 
say yes or no to its proposals. To many a young fellow 
the critical time comes at about the age when he goes to 
college. For this the college is in no way responsible, 
though many conscientious men have tried to hang the 
blame there. 

I should not feel that I was quite doing my duty if I did 



186 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

not say a word about the temptations peculiar to young 
men at the age when they enter college, and which in col- 
lege, perhaps, are touched up with peculiar allurements 
and attractions. It is true that a large majority of 
young men are little affected by these temptations and 
still fewer are permanently injured by them, but those 
who fail in college do so usually not from inability to do the 
work, but because they are led away by these other things. 

May I speak in a more personal and direct way to 
the boy entering college? First of all there is the habit 
of loafing. Before you leave the train which is carrying 
you to your college town, sometimes unfortunately even 
before you are out of high school, you will have made 
engagements for days and weeks in advance which will 
often seriously interfere with the real work of college. 
There is the fraternity rushing, and the open grate fire, 
and the pipe, and the vaudeville show, and the new- 
found friend, and the moon smiling down and inviting 
you out to stroll, and all these pleading in the strongest 
terms for self-indulgence, and self-gratification. There 
are a thousand other new and fascinating things which 
you may call by any name you please, but which after 
all are only other names for loafing. If you get into 
the habit of dawdling away your time, you can conjure 
up a hundred apparently good excuses for not studying, 
and for not going to class. 

Perhaps one of the main reasons why it all seems so 
attractive and so safe is because the days are so long. 



GOING TO COLLEGE 187 

and the time of final reckoning so far ahead and youth 
is so optimistic. I seldom call a man for procrastination 
and neglect of duty who does not tell me that it had 
been his serious intention to see me that day even if 
I had not called him, and I presume he is often telling 
the truth. I seldom talk to a loafer who has not promised 
himself, even before I urge him to get down to serious 
work, that he will stop loafing at once. The loafer has 
a sensitive conscience. 

'^I was coming in to see you today even if you had 
not called me," Walsh said to me this morning. "I 
know what you're going to say; I'm a loafer." 

Loafing is a habit easily learned and hard to break, 
and it ruins more college careers at the very outset than 
does any other vice. 

Then you should have a regular time for going to work 
each evening. You should not be turned from the habit 
by alluring invitations to get into card games, or to stand 
around the piano and develop your taste for poor music, 
or to waste the evening in attendance upon a low-class 
vaudeville show, or a racy moving picture performance, 
or even to sit in front of the fire and talk about politics 
or the girls with your room-mate. When the time comes 
for study, you should go to it as if you liked it, and do 
this six days in the week and three or four hours a day. 
If you do this for a month or two there will be little likeli- 
hood of your developing into a chronic loafer. I have 
said all of this knowing that every healthy young fellow 



188 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

will want pleasure and relaxation and knowing also that 
he ought to have it. But the day furnishes time enough 
for class work and study and recreation and sleep if 
the twenty-four hours are intelligently utilized, and 
there is plenty of healthful recreation for the body and the 
naind if one will look fdr it. 

The temptation to waste time in gambling is an ever- 
present danger. There is a fascination in risking your 
judgment in a bet with another fellow or in a game of 
chance, which many a young man finds it hard to resist. 
It is so easy to argue that one must have some recreation, 
and, that if the time spent in playing games of chance 
is not intemperate or in excess of what one can afford, 
there should be no objection to the practice on the part 
of any sensible people. As to the money lost or won (for 
some one usually wins) it is often a negligible quantity, 
and in most cases not more perhaps than you might 
spend on a first class show or entertainment of any sort. 

''What is the harm to me?" a young man asked me 
not long ago. "I can afford the time and the money 
it costs me. Why should I not play poker for money?" 

I should answer that it is a dangerous habit, because 
it almost invariably leads to excesses. The gambler 
learns to take risks which he can not afford, to waste 
time that should be given to something else, to bet and 
to lose money which was not intended for this purpose, 
and he develops at once a reputation for unreliability. 
No business man, even if he himself gambles, cares to em- 



GOING TO COLLEGE 189 

ploy a young fellow who has, or has had the habit, simply 
because he knows the dangers which surround it. I have 
known few men who began the habit in college who found 
it easy to break, and I have known none who, even though 
he played for small stakes and won or lost very little 
money, was not injured by it. If the habit is nothing 
more, it is a time waster and leads into associations which 
it were usually better not to have formed. 

As to drinking, perhaps, now that prohibition has 
become nation wide, we shall have little or none of that 
in college. Many fellows say to me that they learned 
to drink at home with their fathers and mothers about 
the dinner table. If it must be done, I know of no better 
place to do it. The drinking habit as I have seen it prac- 
ticed in a college community has never been a help nor 
an advantage to any student, and it has usually been 
a distinct injury. The only excuse for it is that it is 
supposed to encourage sociability and to promote good 
fellowship; but the sort of good fellowship which it en- 
courages is not of very high order. The men and women 
whom you are likely to meet at drinking places are not 
the kind that a college student will be benefited by know- 
ing, and the time spent in their society is not usually spent 
in such a way as to make him a better citizen. It is a fact, 
also, that practically all the young fellows I have known 
who speak of the harmlessness of "taking a glass of beer 
occasionally" at one time or another take more than they 
can carry and are the worse for it. The safest plan if you 



190 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

are going to college with the idea of doing honest, satis- 
factory work is to leave the drinking of intoxicating li- 
quors to those who have no real interest in the develop- 
ment of their moral and intellectual powers, for the drink- 
ing habit will invaribly play havoc with your college work, 
not to speak of your morals. 

Smoking, too, although it can scarcely be called an 
immoral habit, has upon nervous and growing young 
fellows a bad effect. It is likely to develop restlessness 
and indigestion with the result that your power of con- 
centration is weakened, your brain dulled, and the likeli- 
hood of your doing good work very much lessened. The 
habit of using tobacco is in these days so common 
among young men that it seems almost a waste of 
time to speak against it. I have, however, seen too 
many nervous systems weakened by its use, and 
the work of too many students injured irreparably, 
not to utter a word of warning against it. Though 
the number of young fellows in college who smoke is 
regrettably large, you will gain nothing either in prestige 
or dignity by doing so. The ability to hold a pipe between 
the teeth or to puff at a cigarette does not make you 
more of a man even in a college community, and the fact 
that you do not smoke brings you into no discredit. No 
one need to say that he was forced into smoking in col- 
lege or that he was made uncomfortable by refusing to 
do so. If you find, therefore, that smoking is injuring 
your temper and your pocketbook and your studies, give 



GOING TO COLLEGE 191 

it up; you will be quite as popular as you were before, and 
maybe more of a man. 

If you have come from a healthy home where you 
have been taught by a good mother to live a clean life, 
and to respect all women, you may be shocked at first 
by some of the views which are presented to you, and 
later you may even come to the point of asking yourself 
if you have not been a trifle prudish in your ideas, and if 
the other fellow may not be right in his views. There will 
be those who will try to teach you that it is not only 
not necessary for you to lead a chaste clean life, but that 
it is positively not a healthy thing for you to do so. They 
will teach you that if you desire to gain your highest 
physical development you must gratify your physical 
desires, and such men are only too willing to show you 
how this may be done. The statements of thousands 
of reputable physicians are to the effect that no young 
man suffers physically by living a life of chastity, but 
on the contrary he gains in strength and endurance by 
such a course. The young man who allows himself to 
be led into the associations of lewd women either through 
curiosity or the desire to know something of ''real life*' 
is running the gravest sort of danger. Most men who 
submit themselves to such temptations fall a prey to 
them, and the result in most cases is a weakened will, 
a lowered moral tone, disease, a wrecked body, and eternal 
regret. 

Only a few months ago I stood beside the operating 



192 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

table where a young college student was about to submit 
to a critical operation to alleviate a disease which he had 
contracted from a prostitute. He was thinking, I know, 
of the pain which he must endure and of the danger 
to his life, and looking up into my face he said, having 
in mind the many fellows to whom I talk every year, " Tell 
them they always have f^o pay for it; they always have 
to pay for it." Through many years of observation on 
thousands of students I have come to know that the 
boy's words are true. The clean, continent life is the 
only safe one, and those young men who think other 
wise and who gratify their physical passions "pay for 
it " ultimately in ruined health, and ruined characters, 
and ruined studies. The student with a clean mind 
and clean morals has the best chance of winning high 
scholastic standing. One other thing that you should 
well keep in mind — some day you are going to have 
a home of your own; and to take to it the girl whom you 
have chosen to be your wife. If at that time you can 
come to her with a body free from the effects of disease 
and a past life clean and wholesome, you may count 
the sacrifices of self-control as nothing compared with 
the satisfaction you will then feel. 

In going to college most young fellows find themselves 
away from the restraints of home for the first time. Fa- 
thers and mothers often feel that this sending the boy 
away from home and putting him in the way of temptation 
and upon his own responsibility is a danger which they 



GOING TO COLLEGE 193 

can not risk. Sometime or other, if one is to learn to 
swim, he must be thrown into the water, and allowed to 
make the struggle alone. It is not likely to work any dam- 
age if some one is sufficiently interested to stand by and 
watch the struggle, and if drowning is imminent, which 
is seldom the case, to extend the helping hand. Usually 
the swimmer learns because he has to, as the muskrat 
was said to learn to climb a tree. Having been given 
preliminary training he must be allowed to work out his 
own methods; he may go under a few times and take in a 
little water, but he learns in the end to swim. 

It is equally true of the college man. He must learn 
independence and self-rehance, and self-direction in the 
same way that young people learn to swim. One of the 
greatest sources of satisfaction to a college officer is to 
see how few suffer real disaster in the learning, and, when 
these unfortunate results do come, the trouble is quite as 
often at home as elsewhere, and would very likely have 
occurred no matter where the young man had been. 

The matter of your associates is a serious one. The 
majority of the people with whom you are most intimately 
thrown you may very likely have never seen before; of 
their habits and their ancestors you can at first know 
but little. You should use caution, if you are to choose 
wisely. You will be better off and safer in the end if you 
go slowly and look about you before you plunge into too 
fast friendships, either literally or figuratively. Your 
friends are most likely to be your making or your 



194 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOY 

undoing. You have your opportunity to choose them con- 
sciously, and you should do this with a full knowledge 
of what your choice may mean. Good friends will lead 
you in the right direction, will help you to cultivate 
healthy, right habits, and will aid you in getting out of 
your college course the best there is in it. Ill chosen 
friends may easily defeat all the right purposes for which 
you have come to college. Now, as always, a man is 
judged by the company he keeps. 

All these problems are difficult, but they are possible of 
solution, and they are only a part of the training in the 
discipline of the mind and of the body which forms the 
major part of education. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



r^ 



